Anyone watching?

Some stunning houses.

Kyle House though owned by Mr polson i think. 1900 quid to hire!

Loved the water tower house – stunning staircase but I bet it gets old quick trudging up it all the time. It appeared to keep them fit though!

The other nominated house annoyed me – perfectly nice Georgian house in its own right with a jarring 2001 space Odyssey monolith plonked on the side. I’d consign the architect to doing kitchen extensions for the rest of her career if I was God.

Love to know the costs of them as well.

Kyle House though owned by Mr polson i think

I’ll have to watch that, if it is Tony Polson, ex of Yorkshire, then I know him, he is an obnoxious opinionated boor. Hopefully it isnt the same one!

£1900 for a weekend fri-mon, 4-7march so off season.
Liked the one for the kids, nice that so many people contributed to it’s build. Wonder if the architect was as generous come bill time.

I thought the narrow steel frame was a lovely, modest, well designed thing. Opposite of your average Grand Design.

MrPolvsen’s place was great though.

I didn’t like the rusty pile of concrete boxes near Hull though.

https://www.architecture.com/awards-and-competitions-landing-page/awards/riba-house-of-the-year

Some great houses some not so great, it really grates on me that people can get planning permission for grand houses with “architectural merit” but not for a normal family home which would be way more environmentally friendly. Much harder to building something small & special in my view.
I occasionally cycle past Flint House which was riba house of the year in 2015,dunno if its the setting or not but it just looks a bit shit now 🙁

I didn’t like the slot house for a couple of reasons, mainly that it didn’t seem to be a house but was likely just being used as a home office, with a guest bedroom.

There also didn’t appear to be a lot of thought put into insulating it. Maybe there was and they didn’t let us know but those steel beams that looked like they went all the way from external to internal looked like they might be horrible cold bridges.

It might be a clever use of space but if it’s glistening with condensation every morning and all the heat pisses out the roof then it wouldn’t be much fun.

It wasn’t a house, it was a clever building. No-one who owned anything could ever live there as there was no zero storage space, apart from a bookcase… I’m sure as soon as the awards are over they’ll be knocking through to their house next door and insulating it properly so that they can use it.
I don’t know if that link above has the results but I’m not clicking on it, just in case…:-)

I tend to agree with the views so far. The water tower was well done but the second one that went through should never have got planning permission.

This weeks I didn’t really think any deserved to go through. The slit house looked clever but who actually lives in it given the owners live next door? I presume they insulated the end walls and rely on it been a mid terrace for the side walls. The second one I understood why they did it but didn’t see what was so special about it. As it was an extension there was no mention as how it realates to the existing building and the rooms they already had

While I’m on my moaning horse:

That massive overhang!? If you are going to have a feature like that I think it should have a reason to exist. The reason seemed to be purely to have a massive overhang. It looked obnoxious, it wasn’t sustainable in that it presumably needed a lot of extra material to support it, and it wasn’t cleverly balanced but needed an engineer to look at the drawings and sort out a way of keeping it up.

All the architect did was draw an overhanging line and say “I want an overhang that long woooo” and leave the engineer and the builder to sort it out.

I don’t get how that makes a building architecturally significant. I think if a building looks like one thing but has got loads of hidden engineering to make it look that way, rather than being designed in a cohesive way then it’s a bit of fail.

All the architect did was draw an overhanging line and say “I want an overhang that long woooo” and leave the engineer and the builder to sort it out.

What? You don’t think architects regularly rely on structural engineers to make their creations buildable?

I’ve often wondered what architects learn whilst getting qualified. It takes many years but the number that seem to have no idea how much anything they design will cost to build or if it will even stand up.

I find some small homes more inspirational. As a result, I follow this cool little channel on YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/NEVERTOOSMALL

What? You don’t think architects regularly rely on structural engineers to make their creations buildable?

I know they do, I just think it would be better to make it cohesive rather than bolt on the engineering afterwards. Sometimes it seems a bit like designing a car by doing the bodywork first. I say seems like cause in reality I have no idea how it works other than TV design shows.

Fair point meikle.

If we have to ask the question ‘to what extent the architect understands to the engineering required to execute a design,’ then the architect hasn’t managed to demonstrate or articulte that knowledge within the design.

The same applies to many large scale public artworks, which to my eye seem to be little more than a doodle that has been passed onto an engineering company to solve all the problems that that artist hasn’t understood or even chosen to engage with.

The Anish Kapoor tower at the Olympic park springs to mind, I remember seeing a documentary about it’s making which seemed to mainly consist of the artist yelling down the phone at engineers who were telling him that what he drew was either physically impossible or falls foul / fails to consider building regulations!

I watched the second one last night. None of them stood out for me. The Slot House was really stupid. As said above, what insulation and heating have they got?
For a single person/couple, it may be a good idea, but I’d hate the heating bills. Notice how they didnt show the bathroom, it must have been the size of a budget hotels shower rooml, which is fine for a few nights, but to live with it? I cant recall the kitchen.
The Kyle House was nothing special, just “I’ve got £500k to spend on this house, lets make it look good”. Nothing that couldnt be done by anyone who could afford it, in fact I thought it was pretty plain.
The one with 2 /3 children in Surrey, I cant see why that is good design, it didnt do anything for me, the only ‘radical’ thing about it was the large awning at the rear. After a few summers, that is going to look like spiders heaven.