Catching Sun House

by StudioShaw

Client Mark Shaw

Award RIBA London Award 2025

The award winner tells us: "Catching Sun House is located in Walthamstow, North East London, on a brownfield site between Victorian terraces.

It was designed to be a long term home for the practice’s founder. The plot was bought at auction with approved planning consent for two houses and the site cost was shared with close friends who have built on the other half. The brief was developed over years of thinking about how to live with several years passing after the purchase before construction began, allowing time to refine the design.

The building is conceived as a series of boxes connected by glazed screens. This creates a series of spaces – some internal, some external – which read as one. The articulated roof form gives ceiling height and clerestory windows allow sunlight to penetrate, especially in winter. The material palette is simple: a double skin of concrete blocks, polished concrete floor, anodised aluminium windows, and coloured MDF joinery."

The jury says: "Tucked away and barely visible from the road, the site had perhaps been too challenging for a commercial developer (there were 27 party walls). The architect-owner has used great skill to respond very deliberately to context and orientation to create an unexpected and serene home – one of two that the site already had permission for when it was bought. The permitted scheme was put to one side. Waiting some time before beginning development, the site’s orientation and the passage of the sun over it were carefully studied before the revised design was fixed."

Read the full citation from the RIBA Awards Jury on RIBA Journal

Contractor Lita Construction

Structural engineer Heyne Tillett Steel

Environmental / M&E engineer 21 Degrees

Quantity surveyor / Cost consultant David Flower

Landscape architect Charlie Hawkes

Gross internal area 97.5m²