Consisting of eight net-zero townhouses, Hermitage Mews is an award-winning development built as an infill of a gap site on a long, thin strip of land on Beulah Hill in the London Borough of Croydon.
The scheme has been designed to achieve the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge and Gbolade Design Studio selected Vandersanden's Azalea brick to blend with the context of the area’s surrounding buildings.
All images: Gbolade Design Studio
Gbolade Design Studio was sought out by the Client at RIBA stage three upon acquisition of the site post-planning. The practice re-designed and optimised the layout of the scheme and challenged the client to raise the performance standards to well above those required by building regulations.
The resulting three-bedroom homes creatively and sensitively navigate the site's steep topography from front to back to create uplifting and generous, light-filled spaces across three levels. All the homes are dual or triple aspect with front doors accessing the street, encouraging neighbourliness and natural surveillance.
In the surrounding area, the buildings are predominantly formed of rich, mostly coloured, hand moulded clay facing bricks. With this in mind, the architects spent time working with Vandersanden to find a complementary palette of materials to ensure that the project would come to life and fit relatively seamlessly into the urban landscape.
The scheme’s saw-edged roofline adds distinctiveness to the streetscape whilst complementing neighbouring low-rise pitched architecture.
“The team at Vandersanden were incredibly helpful in working with us to identify options that might be appropriate for the scheme,” explains Tara Gbolade & Lanre Gbolade, co-founding directors of Gbolade Design Studio.
“They had a great understanding of the project, and it was good to be able to choose a series of bricks over that period of decision making. We landed on the beautiful, Azalea as it really complemented the context and also had a richness to the street scene with its sand-coated, grained textures and its red and pink colour tones.”
With the Azalea brick used throughout, the pallet of detailing was kept relatively simple to allow the brick and its natural textures and shades of pinks, reds and oranges to do a lot of the work, although a delicate protruding stepped brickwork detail was employed to add depth to certain areas. “This detail is a kind of playful touch,” notes Gbolade.
“We tried not to go overboard with brick detailing, but it adds something special to the facades, critically to the entrances that you experience coming into the dwellings off Beulah Hill.”
On the rear elevation, at first-floor level, privacy and overlooking are addressed through angled forms with windows inserted on the side face. To achieve this, the architects worked closely with Vandersanden to produce brick specials that were used to create pointed, angled forms. These were easy to install by the bricklayers on site and have helped give an acute, crisp aesthetic to the dwelling’s rear elevation.
“Vandersanden really helped bring our vision to life,” says Tara. "The service from the team was excellent in terms of working with the design consultants to support us on some of the intricate details and specials that we needed to bring our vision to life.” Gbolade believes that working with supply chain partners like Vandersanden is a very collaborative experience.
“Getting that level of attention to detail from supply chain manufacturers means that we can work together to create very special projects.”
Hermitage Mews has received a number of accolades, including Inside Housing Best Development (up to 3 storeys), BD Net Zero Architect of the Year and Architects Journal Housing Project 2024; it was also recognised as a BD Private Housing Architect of the Year finalist.
“The scheme now looks like it's always been there on Beulah Hill,” comments Lanre. “It shows that when you do come together collaboratively, you can achieve great things.”
For more information about this project and on Vandersanden’s Azalea bricks and the wide range of high-quality bricks available from Vandersanden visit their website. Details on Gbolade Design Studio can be found here.
