London studio Hugh Strange Architects has restored and extended a hillside Victorian home in Hastings, reinstating its connection to a terraced concrete garden with a series of stepped metal and timber forms.
Named House on a Hill, the home sits in the West Hill area of Hastings, where Victorian terraces back onto gardens with retaining walls that step down towards the coastline.
Following an extension in the 1980s, the dwelling had turned its back on its terraced garden, the concrete walls of which had begun to fall into disrepair.
To reinstate this connection, Hugh Strange Architects has added three glazed, timber-framed forms at the rear of the home and repaired the terraced concrete garden with visible patches and metal anchors.
“The careful repair of the concrete terraces of the steeply sloping rear garden suggests a metaphor of darning: of precise interventions of anchoring and patching, in place of demolition and replacement, stitching the dilapidated site towards reuse,” studio founder Hugh Strange told Dezeen.
“Onto this mended hillside, a series of lightweight timber structures allow the existing Victorian dwelling to reorientate towards the outside spaces, while also piecing together a new route up the rear garden through repaired and new elements,” he added.
The largest timber extension replaces an uninsulated 1980s lean-to, forming a cloister-like gallery space that connects the kitchen and dining room. It opens onto the garden through sliding windows and doors above a built-in bench.
To the north, it steps up into an additional living area within the second extension, which also overlooks the courtyard. Alongside it is an elevated garden study, accessible only from the outside via a galvanised steel staircase.
“Where previously the rooms were disconnected and lacking natural light, there are now multiple routes through and in and out of the house, and light is brought into the depths of the interior,” Strange said.
Inside and out, the laminated veneer lumber (LVL) structure of the extensions has been left exposed, with junctions designed to allow for easy disassembly and reuse.
Topping each of the extension volumes is a projecting metal-clad roof that, along with the galvanised steel elements, were chosen as a lightweight means of offering protection against the coastal weather.
Accoridng to the studio, the site’s biodiversity has been improved thanks to the garden and green roofs on the extensions, which incorporate drought-resistant plant varieties that require little to no watering.
Hugh Strange founded his eponymous studio in 2011. Previous projects by the firm include a courtyard home in Cornwall that was informed by the area’s agricultural buildings.
Other British home renovations recently featured on Dezeen include Studio Hagen Hall’s revamp of the mid-century Pine Heath home and an “unashamedly contemporary” extension to an English farmhouse by Will Gamble Architects.
The photography is courtesy of Hugh Strange Architects.
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