Housestead
by Sanei Hopkins Architects
Client Abigail Hopkins and Amir Sanei
Award RIBA East Award 2025
The award winner tells us: "Housestead is situated in the Suffolk coastal Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty/Sites of Special Scientific Interest alongside the Alde-Ore Estuary, on the grounds of a large multi-generational family property. Having occupied a small annexe for 10 years and after five children, the architects - Amir and Abi - started thinking about occupying another part of the estate and creating their own multi-generational house for the next generation.
The project was conceived in 2010 and was approved in October 2014 as a new isolated dwelling in the open countryside under (then) Paragraph 55 of the National Planning Policy Framework.
A large non-indigenous self-seeded birch grove adjacent to the site of a derelict lodge provided the opportunity for significant landscape improvements to the Suffolk coastal heathland, and would create a potential site for the new house. A new ‘Lodge’ perpetuates the evolutionary nature of rural estates and farms that change in response to external factors."
The jury says: "Set on a breathtakingly beautiful piece of land overlooking a coastal inlet near Aldeburgh, it is part of a larger estate owned by Hopkins’s architect-parents. Their design consists of an experimental, joyful set of distinct building elements. The glass-walled living room has a massive thatched roof supported by lightweight pink steel columns and trusses. The children’s bedrooms form a single-storey block, with improvised solar water-heating panels as the roof, and a glazed south-facing corridor featuring a Trombe wall (designed to absorb solar heat and then release it back into the space)."
Read the full citation from the RIBA Awards Jury on RIBA Journal
Environmental, M&E and sustainability Max Fordham
Structural engineer Teckniker Consulting Engineers
Structural and civil engineer G C Robertson
Structural and SIPS engineer JMS Engineers
Ecologist Abrehart Ecology
Ecologist The Landscape Partnership
SAP assessor SAPS 4U
Gross internal area 510m²
