Vestige

by Smith Young Architects

Client Private

Award RIBA North West Award 2025 and RIBA North West Building of the Year 2025 (sponsored by EH Smith)

The award winner tells us: "Smith Young Architects were originally commissioned to extend and convert an existing detached Edwardian house into a new family home. The original house was suffering from a long-term lack of repair and reflected a pattern of living that was far more relevant to life more than a century ago.

The project evolved into a journey of discovery and adaptation, an investigation into repurposing, recycling and resourcefulness. Conceived as an augmentation of the original house plan, the spatial composition was directly influenced by the nine-square grid. This new family home examines a fundamental tension of architecture – the responsibility to belong to its surroundings in terms of scale, proportion and material, while facilitating the patterns of everyday life through the making of rooms."

The winner says: "The solid base of the ground floor is in rough-rendered bricks salvaged from a smaller house that used to sit on the site. The original foundations of this building were also reused, reducing the carbon footprint and saving money. The rooms are well-proportioned, and the overall layout carefully devised to achieve a greater sense of space and contain a wide range of experiences, belying the building’s size.

From the double-height top-lit entrance hall, wide enough to accommodate a bench to sit on when putting on your shoes, to the timber-lined stair detailed with all the care of a jewellery box, there is a surprise around every corner. The jury were pleasantly taken aback by the courtyard garden that is hidden behind a wall and fence to the front of the house."

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

Contractor Carey Construction

Structural engineer Sanan Consulting

Gross internal area 232m²