Surman Weston Ltd

Ditton Hill House

Ditton Hill House
© Johan Dehlin

DITTON HILL HOUSE

Surman Weston

CATEGORY
Houses

LOCATION
Long Ditton, United Kingdom

ARCHITECTS
Surman Weston

AREA
264 m²

PHOTOGRAPHS
Johan Dehlin

PROJECT ARCHITECT
Percy Weston

MANUFACTURERS
Tata Steel, Elite Metalcraft, Velux, Wellington Glazing

STRUCTURAL ENGINEER
Structure Workshop

SERVICES ENGINEER
Synergy

ECOLOGY CONSULTANT
Astute ecology

CONTRACTOR
Wadey Builders

METALWORK FABRICATOR
Elite Metalcraft

YEAR
2020

Text description provided by architect.

Ditton Hill House is a new-build, two-storey detached house built on a suburban street in Surbiton. With its pitched roof and pure white walls, it might at first glance seem at odds with its neighbours in this leafy district of west London.

However, its form and materialisation are strongly informed by the local vernacular, and its design has emerged from the careful orchestration of subtle references to it.

Ditton Hill House
© Johan Dehlin
Ditton Hill House
© Johan Dehlin

With its traditional A-frame elevation, the house borrows the language of mock-Tudor ubiquitous in the suburbs and turns it on its head by expressing it in a steel frame – the materiality of modernity.

The inherent strength of the steel exoskeleton permitted a thinning of the structural steel, which helps to express the pitched form diagrammatically as if it were drawn by a child.

In the garden elevation, Crittall-style glazing offers a contemporary twist on the leaded windows synonymous with the mock-Tudor genre.

These materials are combined with slurried brick infill panels, another nod to mock-Tudor building techniques.

Ditton Hill House
© Johan Dehlin

The whiteness of the exterior continues a long tradition of modern white villas and civic buildings which dates back to the 1930s. The Grade II-listed Art Deco masterpiece Surbiton train station by James Robb Scott became a constant reference point for the architects during the four-year delivery process.

Designed for the founder of bohemian fashion brand Star Mela, the client’s brief was for a contemporary house with an industrial aesthetic, which would be much more than a simple minimalist open-plan box.

Ditton Hill House
© Johan Dehlin

The route through the house is designed to offer a range of spatial experiences. You enter directly into the vertically proportioned triple-height entrance hall. This voluminous hall functions as an intermediary space – a sort of internal courtyard – so the materials are deliberately raw, with exposed blockwork walls and roughly-screeded concrete floors.

From the light and height of the entrance hall, you step down under the stairs into a darker hallway space beneath a heavyweight concrete soffit, before you move into the more domesticated spaces, arriving in the living room. Passing from the hallway into the living room, there is a dramatic change in spatial quality, from compression to expansiveness, as the ceiling height increases and panoramic rear windows provide an uninterrupted view of the garden.

Ditton Hill House
© Johan Dehlin
Ditton Hill House
© Johan Dehlin

The material palette becomes increasingly warmer, with timber floors underfoot and softer plaster walls acting as counterpoints to the steel roof and floor decks that run throughout the house. The exposed decks add texture to the interior palette and were seen as a modern interpretation of exposed Tudor timber beams.

Upstairs, bedrooms and bathrooms are housed within the “loft space”, which, at five metres in height and primarily lit from above, has an almost church-like peaceful quality. Access to the garden was a priority of the client. On the upper floor, the master bedroom opens onto an enclosed balcony, where she can enjoy views of the sky and trees.

Ditton Hill House
© Johan Dehlin


Ditton Hill House
Ground floor plan
Ditton Hill House
First floor plan

Surman Weston Ltd
T +44 20 35810809
Surman Weston Ltd
20A Iliffe Yard, London SE17 3QA, United Kingdom