A Pivotal Moment

Words by Hannah Tapping

“Of the hill, from the hill, for the hill”; a dialogue between landscape and living.

The RIBA national awards are a highlight of the architectural year where a panel of architects visit projects throughout England to select the best, the curious and the deeply worthy. This year only one house in Cornwall made it through to the final jury selection and is now being considered for house of the year 2025. Mike Rundell, Principal of Rundell Associates, discusses what makes Two-Family House such a special project.

How did this project come about and what drew you to this particular site?

One of the clients was well-known to us as we had worked on their London home previously, so we had good experience of working together. They were interested in finding a seaside retreat, so I went in search of a suitable site on their behalf. I’m Cornish myself, and grew up in Cornwall in a family of builders; I know the North coast very well and realised that a site in Mawgan Porth would be perfect as it’s so close to Cornwall Airport Newquay. We were lucky enough to secure an off-market sale of a front-line south facing site with a garden and private path leading right down to the beach. Perfect!

While it was obviously a great location, it soon became clear that it was going to be unfeasibly expensive for my client to make best use of the site. Rather than accepting a trade-off on location or design, they made a different compromise: to share ownership. They therefore approached some like-minded friends and plans for Two-Family House were born

Can you tell us about the existing structure and how you approached the site initially?

It was a classic 1930s house, built on the site of an abandoned quarry with a high stone face at the back of the plot and a plateau at the front. The original house had been set quite a way from the back of the quarry, so we effectively kept the same plateau, nibbled away a bit more of the stone face and planted the new house right back against the face of the quarry, which gained us a lot of extra space. 

What was the client’s brief and how did you respond to it?

The house had to exist comfortably in its surroundings, connecting with them, rather than being a brash intervention – an ambition well-articulated (with apologies to Abraham Lincoln) as “Of the Hill; From the Hill; For the Hill”. The clients wanted a modern home and each person had their own wish list, most of which was achievable. One particularly memorable request was to be able to see swathes of colour from sea, to beach, to garden and then to the sky – lines of blue, yellow, green, blue – which was for me a particularly colourful brief. Another was to have a place where you could sit and watch the sun set into the sea every evening. That in itself was quite complicated, because the sun doesn’t set in the same place throughout the year; rather it changes through a wide arc between mid-winter and mid-summer. However, for 90% of the time we achieved the ideal and for the rest of the time the client was prepared to stand outside instead. A measure of compromise is always essential…

Can you tell me about the materials used and how they respond to the landscape?

The lower part of the house – the plinth –  is faced in locally quarried stone. Whilst it would have been wonderful to use material from the site itself, this wasn’t possible due to its quality, and so stone was sourced from a couple of quarries a few miles away. We used two quarries because we wanted a real variety of colours ranging from reds, and browns to yellows and greys. 

The upper part of the facade is clad in Shou Sugi Ban, a Japanese charred timber, in a paler grey than is normally used to ensure it blended with the silvers of the local landscape. The roof was clad in copper, which was weathered by the salt from the sea to a wonderful green patina within a few weeks of installation. The interior walls were all left ‘fair faced’ and either clad in stone, in wood, or coated with a Cornish clay plaster – a naturally coloured material giving rich sandy tones of pale ochre.

How did you optimise the design for the views?

Obviously, as architects, we can’t take credit for the view – we didn’t design the hillside. What we can do is make absolutely sure that views are edited, optimised and very carefully controlled. In the early stages of the build, after we had formed the plinth on which the house would stand, we therefore pegged the property out and built a series of towers at different heights to allow the client to check the views that would eventually be part of their life – views from the bedrooms, from the kitchen, from the spa etc etc.

By doing this, we realised that the angle between the west and east wings were not quite right – and so we changed it by eight degrees to take the view away from the village of Mawgan Porth and more towards the headland at the front. And now, when you walk into the house, your view is entirely focussed on the headland and the sea, making it feel very private, very secluded. This kind of late tweak was only possible due the bespoke nature of the build and the close relationship we had with the client.

Can you tell me about your approach to sustainability?

Both families were very environmentally conscious – which suited us perfectly as it is also fundamental to our practice. The choice of how to build was therefore very much on the table from the beginning. We had used cross-laminated timber (CLT) as the basic structure in a recent project with the builders – Gynn Construction – and it seemed the most sensible and environmentally sustainable option for this house as well. The process involves machining large panels of prefabricated timber that, while taking up quite a lot of design time at the start of the project, pays dividends as the build process on site is very fast. As the panels are so carefully made and set out you can pre-order your windows and doors, so that, when the structure arrives, it can be installed, coated in a waterproof membrane and then made watertight almost immediately.

While this calls for considerable logistical control behind the scenes, there’s no other system that can get a building erected in two weeks. And in Cornwall, getting a building up in that relatively short space of time is a very, very useful thing. Being on the North Atlantic coast you want your building to be weather-tight as quickly as possible. We then installed a ground source heat pump alongside electricity from solar cells, PVs and batteries to make sure the house was as self sufficient as possible.

How did you address the challenges of building in Cornwall’s climate?

We designed the whole building – from the plaster, to the CLT structure, to the thick wood-fibre insulation and cladding – to be breathable. Obviously, you don’t want any building to be draughty, but you really don’t want to create a sweaty box where there is damp air all around. We then installed an MVHR system (a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery) so that the whole house can operate in winter without ever opening a window. In summer you just throw the widows open and let the sea breezes cool the house naturally. There are a lot of sea breezes in Cornwall!

How did you work with the interior designers?

We believe that it’s absolutely to engage with an interior designer right from the beginning and so we collaborated very closely with Millard and Flo – a local company – to create a shared vision. Primarily, we needed to Cornwall-proof the house, so floors needed to be robust, there needed to be areas to de-sand children and wash muddy dogs. Certain materials like steel were no-go as they would rust in weeks due to the salt air. We also agreed that the addition of texture throughout the interiors was essential to breathe life into the new build.

How does the house balance being recessive with having interior drama?

Recessive, for me, is a house that doesn’t seek to dominate its surroundings. No one wants a noisy neighbour. So, we used deep overhangs to ensure that the large glass windows are never too visible, and we used local materials, the same colour as would have been quarried centuries ago, to blend the house into its environment. We also wanted to minimise its apparent size, so we buried half the building, bringing the hillside of gorse and grass over the roof. 

Internally, however, excitement is essential. One significant design element was the circular central staircase which became the knuckle around which the house is pivoted and is fundamental to the way the episodes of the house connect. It’s a beautifully dramatic shape as well – everyone wants a house to have drama but the drama needs to be curated rather scattered arbitrarily. Essentially, when designing a house, we see it as a series of episodes that make up a whole story. When you open the front door the first chapter is the view, and then the second is the materiality and then the way that the spaces flow together. We wanted to create a progression through the house that was as visually exciting as possible. However, ultimately the way the drama and excitement are created are by the views of the hillside, the views of the sea, the views of Cornwall. That’s the main story. And then within the chapters, there are smaller paragraphs – the practicalities of pantries and boot-rooms, the twisting staircase, the window seat that you can prop yourself on while looking out to sea… paragraphs and chapters are all essential parts of a good story. 

As Mike and I close our conversation I asked what the response from the families had been. They were, it was clear, very happy with the outcome and had given their feedback to the RIBA jury. 

“Throughout the process, working with the team was a masterclass in patience, sensitivity and creativity”

“Patience – because by designing a house for two families they were prepared to take on the prospect of a four-headed client, and a client group that were obsessed with getting the house’s orientation and layout perfect, even when that meant redesigning it to capture just a few more degrees of view.”

 “Sensitivity – not just in terms of balancing the different demands and wishes of the co-owners, but also in ensuring the design of the house and its materials were sympathetic to its natural and frontline setting, and furthermore, in terms of community management, by scheduling noisy and disruptive work outside of holiday periods.”

“Finally, creativity – in terms of the nuances that make the house so beautiful: the aspirational lift of the west wing of the building’s roof; the intricate aligning of wooden detailing inside and outside the house; the playful curve of the staircase; the tactility of each material the hand comes in contact with; the selection and laying of stone in the walls that bring warmth and texture.”

“The resulting house is one that no-one on the project would have dared envisaged: a house where each member of both families is so in love with it, they wouldn’t change a single element, to the extent that living in the house presents only one problem: no one ever wants to leave.”

And that, of course, is what defines a great house.

Two-Family House was recently awarded a 2025 RIBA South West and Wessex Award – the only residential build in Cornwall to receive one. Presented since 1966, the RIBA Awards set the standard for great architecture across the country. Two-Family House has now been put forward for a RIBA National Award and is now being considered for house of the year 2025.

rundellassociates.com