Sitooterie

We have acted as both architect and contractor to ensure the realisation of this building. By designing and building in this manner it has allow us to spend less time crafting a drawing and more time crafting a building.

Full scale prototyping in our workshops by the same team as those building onsite allows for immediate knowledge transfer from the design to construction.

The steep incline of their garden, which wends its way down to the riverside informed the whole project, with the building nestling into the bankside and creating an extension of the land form.

The multiple angles of the cladding form a painting of their own, beautifully brought to life when the sunlight hits the varying orientations of the textured boards. This is reinterpreted within the interior, with one wall comprised of colourful pigment-infused concrete strata.

The wall acts as a three dimensional painting, enveloping the chimney breast and staircase, referencing the strata of the river and the undulations of the land.

The painterly approach to the interior captures a fantastical sense of excavation, imbuing a sense of mystery and discovery as one descends along the split level to the large glazed, opening looking directly onto the river. The allusions to the earth are reflected in the proportions of the small fireplace set into one wall, reminiscent of both cottage and cave house. As characteristic with these structures, the Sitooterie plays with the idea of a small domestic scale and vastness of nature beyond. The overall feeling is of both cozy escape and intimacy with nature, successfully reinterpreting the summerhouse form, from frivolous grandeur to domestic snug.