Sandy Rendel has designed an intergenerational family home in the leafy village of Cuckfield, West Sussex. John Pardey locates the project within a history of one-off houses that are meaningful, modest, and very much of their time.

Words
John Pardey
Photos
Nick Dearden

In history, the one-off house has always been the test bed for new ideas, new materials and new ways of living. From Palladio’s 16th century Villa La Rotonda that codified classical design principles and was to influence architects across the following centuries, to Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye of 1929 that carved out a new way of living in the modern era, the house project remains the most potent vehicle to move architecture forward and reflect the culture of its day.

In Julian Barnes’ latest – and he says last – novel, Departure(s) he relates that in later life, Verdi “learned how to write less music.” Mies van der Rohe of course liked to say “Less is More” but looking around the architectural scene today, too many architects it seems, lean towards more design, rather than less. So how wonderful it was to visit a modest house in the leafy village of Cuckfield in the South Downs, that is easy to walk past without really noticing. It sits back, quiet and well-mannered in its setting. No shouting.

Its architect, Sandy Rendel, has quietly acquired a reputation for building houses that speak softly, yet sit beautifully in their place. Following the completion of his 2015 Corten-clad house on the banks of the River Ouse in Lewes, Sussex, Rendel subsequently secured a series of commissions in the South Downs that have all gone on to win RIBA awards. Deservedly so, for he has found his voice and his buildings are gentle, but insistent, modest yet assertive.

Today, in the UK, we are polarised between those architects that continue their allegiance to the moribund styles from the past and insist that this is a dignified and proven approach to build today – and those of us that seek a relevant, meaningful and informed way of building in today’s culture. There is no doubt that a Georgian terrace house is a thing of great beauty and grace, yet with the skills that produced it reliant on the penury of masons and craftsmen that laboured to build these structures, today we must strive, as all cultures across time have, to find a relevant and meaningful way of building.

Left: The living room and master bedroom viewed from the garden, together with the recessed dining area. A precast concrete band at first-floor level unites the different volumes of the house.

Built in a dusty terracotta-coloured brick with flush lime-mortar joints, the house reads as a single-storey base with a pre-cast concrete beam at first floor level, and three separate, angular brick volumes above. Rendel, however, prefers to describe the house volumetrically, as three small towers sitting within a single-storey base. Both readings are valid but the unique thing about this house is that the three volumes at first floor provide distinct private eyries, each accessed by their own staircase. This came about as the clients have two grown-up daughters (one has now already left for university), so the idea of three distinct bedroom suites fitted the brief. It becomes an intergenerational house, like the large country house built by Rural Office and James Wright in 2017, which won many accolades and wonderfully accommodated many generations of a family in its capacious form – based on numerous reworkings of a traditional Kentish oast house. Yet here, a steady authoritative plan offers a more achievable template for family living.

Left: A straight-flight timber staircase leads from the main living space to the master bedroom suite.
Right: The kitchen opens on to a dining area that includes exposed ceiling joists. Two steps lead to the timber-floored living space.

White-painted curved brick alcoves contain spiral, precast concrete staircases to the daughters’ separate bedroom suites.

The house avoids the vanity detailing of recessed skirtings and so on, perhaps through budget constraints, but the result is deeply satisfying and matter of fact. Doors, architraves and storage units are gathered into walls of joinery, finished in a greenish-grey satin paint like the windows – all one piece – to read as an overlay onto the white walls. This pragmatic approach also forms the kitchen, where simple carcasses are lent dignity by being faced with three-layer engineered oak boarding front panels with a 4mm outer veneer lending solidity and durability. This boarding also forms the balustrading to the staircase serving the master suite, with a neat oak capping rail that has a curved routed groove for the hand – deftly turning the ordinary into something tactile and precious. Perhaps the one finish that felt a little out of place was the polished concrete flooring on much of the ground level, which just felt too urban.

With the underfloor heating from an air source heat pump and a whole house MVHR system, along with a high-performance envelope and a fabric-first approach to energy use, the house achieved an EPC B Rating at completion. A photovoltaic array with battery storage is scheduled to be installed this year, which will push the energy performance up to an A rating.

Stepping outside, the brick house is united by the precast concrete band that spans across two inset areas (to the hallway and the back of the dining space, defining a terrace), but cleverly stops short on the third volume. This facilitates an unbroken vertical brick wall, asserting the idea of a tower rather than being just a decorative banding. But this unity becomes simultaneously disjointed, reading as three taller volumes rising above a brick plinth – each with a mono-pitched roof that slopes down into the centre of the house, like a Roman atrium. The roofs present the taller sides to the outside (the garage block with its office space at the back also sits beneath a mono-pitched roof). The roofs and copings are elegantly clad in seamed copper, and with greenish-grey window frames, the overall palette is restrained and perfectly in harmony.

As a composition, the house becomes a cluster of roofs, like a tiny village. This brings to mind another seminal 1960s house by Stout and Lichfield at Shipton-under-Wychwood in the Cotswolds. Here, five lozenge-shaped, mono-pitched roofed, stone ‘rooms’ gather to form a house – immortalised in the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick.

Looking back at this house with its three staircases, here is a modest architecture that fits its setting beautifully, celebrates its ordinariness, yet manages to be meaningful. It may not shout, but like a gypsy song sung softly, it lingers far longer in the mind than a roaring anthem. This house endures more than the overt, slick houses that all too often make the cover of lifestyle magazines. It is a modest house built in a simple material palette that is hugely accomplished. It would be great to see Rendel take his skills into some housing projects, as he has all it takes to move the dial gently towards a meaningful architecture on a different scale.

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