Hermitage Mews, Gbolade Design Studio's first net-zero completion, is a family of homes in south London's Crystal Palace. The project, headed by practice co-director Tara Gbolade, was designed to meet strict sustainable architecture standards and the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge, creating a housing scheme that is both design-led and adheres to smart, green building techniques such as passive house principles.
Step inside Hermitage Mews
Hermitage Mews comprises eight townhouses, located across a relatively busy street - although you wouldn't be able to tell from the expert sound-proofing indoors. The properties, comprising three- and four-bedroom homes, and including both terraced and semi-detached options, are defined by their sawtooth roofline and split-level floor plans. This offers both a pleasing visual pattern externally and spatial interest internally, in an overall fairly minimalist complex.
The development was initially conceived by Nissan Richard’s Architects, with Gbolade Design Studio taking over during the Covid-19 lockdown. From there, the new architects reimagined the design to respond to users' new needs, such as remote working and sustainability credentials.
It didn't come without its challenges. ‘This project has had its twists and turns, from the Covid lockdown which paused construction, to the Ukraine War which tripled the price of timber used on site, and through to the client unfortunately passing away during construction, which meant the site closed for a year. But one aspect I am most proud of is that we stayed the course to deliver a project that still met its ambitious sustainability targets, serving as an ode to the team who fought so hard for it,' said Gbolade.
The homes' volumes were configured to work with their surroundings too, featuring multi-coloured hand-moulded clay-facing brick with a textured, sanded-coated finish, which echoes the neighbourhood's deep red block buildings.
-
Like a modernist iceberg, this Krakow house has a perfectly chiselled façadeA Krakow house by Polish architecture studio UCEES unites brutalist materialities with modernist form
-
Leo Costelloe turns the kitchen into a site of fantasy and uneaseFor Frieze week, Costelloe transforms everyday domesticity into something intimate, surreal and faintly haunted at The Shop at Sadie Coles
-
Can surrealism be erotic? Yes if women can reclaim their power, says a London exhibition‘Unveiled Desires: Fetish & The Erotic in Surrealism, 1924–Today’ at London’s Richard Saltoun gallery examines the role of desire in the avant-garde movement
-
Join us on a first look inside Regent’s View, the revamped canalside gasholder project in LondonRegent's View, the RSHP-designed development for St William, situated on a former gasholder site on a canal in east London, has just completed its first phase
-
The Royal College of Art has announced plans for renewal of its Kensington campusThe Royal College of Art project, led by Witherford Watson Mann Architects, includes the revitalisation of the Darwin Building and more, in the hopes of establishing an open and future-facing place of creativity
-
Ursula K Le Guin’s maps of imaginary worlds are charted in a new exhibitionUrsula K Le Guin, the late American author, best known for her science fiction novels, is celebrated in a new exhibition at the Architectural Association in London, charting her whimsical maps, which bring her fantasy worlds alive
-
Power Hall’s glow-up shines light on science and innovation in ManchesterPower Hall at The Science and Industry Museum in Manchester was given a spruce-up by Carmody Groarke, showcasing the past and future of machines, engineering and sustainable architecture
-
Celebrate the angular joys of 'Brutal Scotland', a new book from Simon Phipps'Brutal Scotland' chronicles one country’s relationship with concrete; is brutalism an architectural bogeyman or a monument to a lost era of aspirational community design?
-
Max Creasy on the future of architectural photography and a shift to the ‘snapshot’A show of photographer Max Creasy’s work opens at the AA in London, asking a key question: where is contemporary architectural photography heading?
-
Tour this immaculately composed Islington house for an art collector who loves entertainingAn Islington house by Emil Eve Architects, on coveted Thornhill Road, combines warm minimalism and some expert spatial planning
-
Inside the Apple House, the sustainable centrepiece of Tom Stuart-Smith's gardening EdenThe mission? To explore and celebrate the ways in which nature can impact well-being
