October Practice News

As autumn begins, we’ve seen exciting progress across several projects. There have been dramatic changes on site in the New Forest, we’ve once again supported the Homebuilding & Renovating Awards, and our Allegra’s Ambition public art commission has now been installed in Winchester.

To get our news directly to your inbox you can sign up to our mailing list here.

Courtyard House, SIPs Structure

It was fantastic to see the significant progress at Courtyard House during our recent site visit. This exciting project is delivering a striking contemporary home near Burley, in the heart of the New Forest National Park.

The property is being constructed using Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs), a high-performance composite building system that offers a modern alternative to traditional construction methods. Fabricated off-site, these panels greatly reduce on-site construction time. For this project, it has meant that all walls and the majority of the roofing structure has been erected in under a month!

Judging Industry Awards

Darren was once again invited to join the judging panel for the prestigious Homebuilding & Renovating Awards, held in partnership with The Times and The Sunday Times.

The panel of eight expert judges had the enjoyable, but challenging, task of reviewing all the entries and narrowing them down to a shortlist of just 25 outstanding properties. From this shortlist, the panel will now work together to select the winners for each category.

Have your say! You can also get involved by voting for your favourite project in the Readers’ Choice Award – just click here to vote. 

Allegras Ambition Public Artwork Installed

We’re very proud to see the public art we designed for Allegras Ambition now installed outside Winchester Sports Centre.

Our team won the public art competition last year with a well concieved design that incorporates the charity’s logo into a beautifully tactile wooden seat sculpture. The shape of the structure forms a welcoming enclosure, inviting people to gather, sit, lounge, or even climb and crawl across its undulating surface.

Professional photos coming soon!

Judging Homebuilding & Renovating Awards

Darren was once again invited to be on the judging panel of the prestigious Homebuilding & Renovating Awards, in partnership with The Times and The Sunday Times. The panel of eight expert judges had the enjoyable task of reviewing all the award entries, whittling them down to a shortlist of just 25 properties.

From this list they will now need to agree on the winners for each of the categories. You can also have your say, by voting for your favorite project for the Readers’ Choice Award – click here to vote.

 

Congratulations to all the shortlisted projects, the winners will be announced in the January edition of Homebuilding & Renovating magazine, on sale on 4th December.

Planning Secured for Housing Development

We are absolutely delighted to have secured full planning permission for our Coxford Road housing development, which was approved unanimously at planning committee.

The scheme will transform the existing brownfield site, to deliver much needed city centre housing for the Maybush district of Southampton. The development will deliver 15 high-quality apartments (comprising of two bedroom and one-bedroom units) arranged around a south facing communal courtyard, designed to foster a sense of community and maximise natural light.

 

Read more about the project here.

Recency Villa Site Update

This month has seen the construction start in earnest on our Regency Villa project, located in central Southampton, Hampshire. At this early stage, the focus is on carefully stripping back the modern alterations; carefully removing incongruous additions, taking internal stud partitions out, and clearing out the poorly built extension, to reveal the bones of the original period property.

This four-storey listed townhouse, originally built circa 1835, has lost much of its former grandeur over the years, something we are aiming to restore through this deep renovation and reimagining. Most recently, the property had been converted into a House in Multiple Occupation (HMO), which obscured much of the original character and has compromised the proportions of its rooms.

We’re thoroughly enjoying site visits at this point in the project. It’s exciting to see what the talented team at Tuakana is uncovering, such as original floorboards that had been covered over, and concealed, fireplaces. With the modern partitions removed, we can now fully appreciate the true dimensions of each room. Standing in these newly opened spaces and witnessing the natural light interact with the architecture is genuinely inspiring.

Our design vision is to return the house to a single-family dwelling, one that celebrates its period features while introducing a contemporary glass extension to the rear. The result will be a comfortable, elegant home that brings together the history of the home with the comforts of modern living.

Get in touch if you have a project you would like to discuss with the design team.

Planning secured on second phase at St Margarets

Full planning has been secured for the second phase at St Margarets Church, adding a new entrance to the church in Southsea, Portsmouth.

We had previously worked on the church, helping to transform the almost derelict building into a vibrant community hub, this second phase focuses on installing a new entrance porch to help to further reinvigorate the building with the community. Our design adds a contemporary copper clad porch, creating a striking, visual statement that will activate the front of the church with the public realm.

Having worked closely with the church, planners and community over the last few years, we are so pleased to have finally got planning in place for this addition. We look forward to sharing updates of the work as it starts on site later this year.

Get in touch to discover how we can help tranform your community project.

The Granary starts onsite

We are so pleased to see construction work has started at The Granary, a unique 18th century agricultural building in the New Forest National Park, Hampshire. Our design thoughtfully converts and infills an existing open carport space, to reimagine the ground floor with extended living area.

This allow the first floor to be converted into the private part of the home; by moving all the living area to the ground floor it was then possible to create an additional third bedroom / work space on the first floor, ensuring the long-term future of the building for the young owners.

If you are thinking about reconfiguring your home, get in touch to start the conversation.