Inside Hastings House – RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 shortlist - video Dailymotion

Evening Standard

Hastings House (by Hugh Strange Architects) looks like an ordinary Victorian house from the front, to be found in the seaside town of Hastings on the south coast.Huq, who tours the property with owner Simon (a former oil trader relocating away from London) describes it as "engineering gymnastics."Behind the twin gabled Victorian home was a steep terraced hill leading up to the road behind with bowing and leaning, double storey concrete walls.When the owners moved in it looked like it had been fully renovated in the 1970s and then not changed for 50 years bar additions and layer upon layer of concrete and rubble terraces in the garden to try and navigate the slope.

Transcript

00:00Before I bought it, this house had been empty for four years.

00:06It was the kind of site that no one really wanted.

00:19In some ways it's very simple.

00:21We've repaired a series of terraces and we've extended out into them, stepping up.

00:27But through these simple moves, it becomes spatially complex and architecturally rich.

00:34The big issue on this site, and I think the reason why a lot of people didn't like it,

00:39was it was really dark, it was really outdated.

00:42And I don't think anyone could see or work out, well, how do you solve this?

00:46How do you make it into a place where you want to actually spend time and live?

00:49And in particular, the terraces garden at the rear of the property kind of stepped up

00:54and was very dilapidated, and it was in such poor condition that the house kind of turned its back on it.

01:00It had some slightly uneven concrete stairs that you were constantly afraid you'd fall off,

01:04and two of the structures you couldn't go in because they were likely to fall down.

01:07So it was a bit of a daunting prospect.

01:11You know, there was a sense of kind of horror, but also a kind of delight, actually.

01:15When, as an architect, you see the opportunity for usefulness,

01:17for being able to kind of transform something for the better,

01:20I think that's kind of an exciting thing.

01:29I definitely wanted to maintain as much of the existing house as possible

01:32because it had the history of the site, it had a lot of original features,

01:35and so it's trying to, like, balance between, like, the old side of the house and the new.

01:40And I think sometimes, being in the house, it's almost like telling a story of the past.

01:44It became apparent that we needed to be more proactive

01:47in terms of the structural solutions towards the back of the building,

01:50that actually these terraces weren't able to support new buildings.

01:54We discussed what the environmental and financial costs were

01:58of this process of fully demolishing and rebuilding,

02:01and actually it seemed really inappropriate to us to go down that route.

02:05And I think it's something that is important to me as well,

02:08to not just try and do everything new,

02:10to try and make sure there's an element of reuse about being aware of environmental impact on the site,

02:16and bringing in older houses back into use.

02:19We kind of embarked on a different approach,

02:25an approach that we sometimes likened to the idea of darning a pair of socks,

02:30stitching and threading the hillside back into life through a kind of patchwork of strategies

02:36that retained as much of the old as possible,

02:40introduced new elements through all these different structural approaches

02:43so that once more it could be used and wasn't a structural risk.

02:49Spaces have changed quite a bit now that everything has been opened up,

02:52there's a new extension along the back,

02:55there's a lot of opening so you could really move around the space,

02:58and then as you move up the hill there's a garden room that you can walk into

03:01that opens out onto the terrace,

03:03and then going up another level on the hill there's additionally a sort of work from home office.

03:08There's a few areas that I really like, I actually, this area we're sitting in here, the gallery area,

03:13I actually think this has kind of unlocked all the potentials.

03:17It's not a defined room in a traditional sense,

03:19it's not a space where you clearly do something in particular,

03:22but I found that it's one of the spaces that people use the most,

03:25like if I have friends, if I have family over,

03:27everyone just ends up sitting out here because it's a nice place,

03:30you feel right in the heart of everything.

03:32The heart of the brief as well was this indoor-outdoor feel,

03:35like the ability to like move through spaces,

03:38not only within the house but like moving from inside to outside

03:41and feeling that you're quite connected to the space outside.

03:44We really enjoyed this way of developing a contemporary form of timber construction

03:53in a way that related to older forms of carpentry.

03:57We wanted to work in a way that prioritised an opportunity for future reuse

04:03by not using nails as a determinant form of connecting,

04:06but also something about architectural culture where the various elements of posts and beams

04:11are kind of legibly seen to support one another.

04:14And so because of that, the column visibly supports the beam

04:18and one beam is notched to support another beam.

04:21I like the layering of that wood.

04:23I like the slightly industrial feel it brings to it

04:25because you can really see how it's constructed

04:27rather than it having some coated in something to make it look perfect.

04:30I like the imperfectness of some of the materials we've used.

04:32It's this kind of combination of these three materials in particular,

04:37the timber, the galvanised steel and the concrete,

04:39which I think define the project.

04:40And all of them significantly, I think, don't have an applied finish.

04:44They're all kind of naturally finished materials that weather and age

04:48and develop character over time.

04:57So there's an idea of structure that's to do with architectural culture,

05:02but also about future reuse and repurposing

05:05that feeds into a kind of broader idea of how a space is configured.

05:11I think that's what architecture should be about.

05:13Let's challenge ourselves to think and find solutions in an innovative way,

05:17but without losing sight of what's come before.

05:21But we're also thinking about how the present might project into the future

05:24and how in 50, 100 years' time this building might be repurposed

05:29and that sense of constructing in a way that allows and facilitates forms of repurposing.

05:36I think it's really important as we move forward.

05:38But I think often there's something more remarkable about

05:42making something extraordinary out of something ordinary.

05:45Its ambitions are more than that of an extension.

05:48I think its ambitions are site-wide about site transformation.

05:52and I think it's another question.

05:53It's a great question.

05:54It's a great question.

05:55It's a great question.

05:56It's a great question.

05:57I think there are ways to find ways to find that

05:58to think in order and to explore information.

05:59Let's look at the question.

06:00Let's look at the question.

06:02What are these things?

06:03What is the most important thing?

06:04The question is that the reason the last way

06:06is is how to communicate with these individuals

06:07and the information that we use

06:09and you can probably use different access pharmacies

Inside Hastings House – RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 shortlist

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended