Monkton is the newest residential project from London-based Sandy Rendel Architects, cementing the practice’s reputation for creating highly functional yet aesthetically austere that prioritise material simplicity, internal connectivity and meticulous attention to detail.
Rendel and his team are part of a tradition of idiosyncratic pragmatism that can be traced back to the Brutalism of the Smithsons through the early works of Caruso St John, David Chipperfield, Tony Fretton and others.
Front facade details, Monkton
The four-bedroom house is located in the West Sussex village of Cuckfield and was developed in close collaboration with the client, who oversaw a substantial amount of the building work. The plot was previously occupied by a run-down bungalow, a brown field site that offered scope for a more substantial dwelling.
The long, narrow plot is located behind the village high street, an area where contemporary ad-hoc developments have largely broken out of the traditional local vernacular; in Rendel’s words, ‘providing no clear grain to work from.’
The new house in its village context
The new house re-asserts the physical solidity and durability of the area’s brick-built architecture, combining a ‘physical robustness’ with flexible and sensitivity to its almost suburban surroundings. This absence of place and continuity helped shape the design of the new house, which offers a complex, multi-faceted street-facing façade that hints at the layered approach within.
The front door, with access to the annexe at left
Designed from the outset to offer a simple, straightforward construction path, the house is faced in soft red clay bricks and lime mortar with visible precast concrete elements defining the floor plates and lintels.
The mono-pitched roofs are clad in copper, with carefully detailed gutters and drainage that never clutters the façade or interrupts the massing. The rectangular plan is long and thin, incorporating a 4-metre change in elevation from the entrance to the north to the very end of the south-facing garden.
The rear garden facade, showing one of the bedroom 'towers' at left
Inside, this shifting topography has been put to creative use, with the living accommodation set over a number of levels and ceilings become higher the deeper you go into the house, where the dining room and main living space face the garden.
No less than three internal staircases provide access to the first floor, which comprises of three unconnected bedroom towers, self-contained suites that are designed to provide separation and privacy for the parents and their grown-up children. Each tower form has its own mono-pitch roof; these have all been angled in different directions to give the house its distinctive, asymmetric silhouette.
The east elevation of the house
The main living spaces are on the ground floor, along with a primary suite and self-contained annexe next to the garage. The house is entered via a paved courtyard which provides privacy and a setback from the road. A hallway leads into the main axis running north-south through the spine of the house.
Internal hallway showing the prefabricated concrete stair leading up to one of the first floor bedrooms
Rendel has given each section of the house its own identifying palette and structure, with exposed Douglas fir ceiling joists in the hallway and kitchen, painted brick adjoining the twin circular concrete staircases (pre-cast units from SpiralUK) and an elegantly resolved structural system using bespoke exposed cruciform steel columns. Bespoke details like the slender curved metal handrail by Cranbrook Iron and the marble kitchen worktops and splashbacks add luxurious texture and tactile points of interaction.
The scale is also generous, with the house (including the garage and annexe) offering nearly 330 square metres of space. Rendel describes this as a ‘long life/loose fit strategy as a series of generous simple spaces whose function is flexible to suit the changing needs of the owners or future residents.’
Future proofing is also evident in Monkton’s efficiency rating, with an air source heat pump and high levels of insulation. A forthcoming photovoltaic array and battery storage will further increase its low energy credentials.
Despite a long design and construction process that started back during the pandemic, the slow and steady approach has paid off, thanks largely to the considered focus on straightforward, conventional construction.
The house joins other recent projects by the South London studio that include a reconfigured and expanded barn in the South Downs, the Slot House, an intricate addition to the urban jigsaw of London, and the award-winning Bury Gate Farm.
Another view of the marble and timber kitchen
As Studio Stour’s landscaping beds in and Monkton’s brick façades start to patinate, the house will take its place as another key moment in the creation of an enduring modern rural typology.
SandyRendel.com, @SandyRendelArch
A worms-eye axonometric drawing of the new house