Open House London 2021: inside Pitched Black, the south London house on stilts

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Jessica Mairs9 September 2021

A narrow laneway that disappears between the gap in two south London terraces leads to a secretive home wedged into a pocket of land against the railway tracks.

The house — a slanted black timber box lifted at one end by crossing electric blue legs — is the home of architect Rhys Cannon, his partner Joanna Brindle and their three children.

This secluded little plot in the Brockley conservation area was hard-won. The couple first came across the former builders’ yard almost a decade ago when the owner approached Cannon’s practice, Gruff Architects (gruffarchitects.com), to explore its development potential.

“The minute I saw it I thought this would be a really interesting opportunity to build a house for ourselves,” he says. “We hadn’t necessarily been looking but we thought we couldn’t miss this opportunity.”

That initial attempt to strike a deal was rejected and the yard kept in use but in 2019, patience paid off when the retiring builder sold up.

The pair paid £250,000 for the site and £600,000 for the house they built on it — minus the cost of professional fees to Cannon’s studio.

“If we tried to buy a four-bed house in this area, it probably would have cost us a million. So the sums stack up,” says Cannon, who found they were priced out of buying a larger home in the neighbourhood when they outgrew their previous one.

Choosing to self-build exempted the project from VAT and Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), which represented a “big, big, big saving” on top of the architectural expertise Cannon brought to the project. “It would have been crazy not to use my skills and knowledge, and exploit those to our benefit,” he says.

Rhys Cannon and Joanna Brindle
Joanna Brindle and Rhys Cannon
Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd

The alley access to the site presented a challenge that has shaped the design of the whole project, which is a strikingly contemporary addition to the Victorian neighbourhood.

Cannon had paid attention to the council’s rejection of a remake of a period coachhouse a decade prior and knew something more modern would float.

“Lewisham council, and even the conservation area, are quite good in that they are willing to accept a contemporary design but don’t like crappy pastiche,” he says.

The upper storey of the house spans the full width of the site and is supported at one end by a network of stilts where the ground floor space has been eaten into to leave space for a parking spot. “It’s about not being too greedy with space,” says Cannon, explaining the temptation to use that valuable square-footage internally.

The blackened wooden cladding of the overhanging box completely blinkers the front of the house where it faces existing homes but opens to the rear where it favours views towards the mature trees that attracted the couple to the site in the first place.

“This is what sold the site to us,” says Cannon. “You can be in the middle of London without being able to see anyone. You can just make out some buildings in the distance on the other side of the railway tracks, but it’s incredibly private.”

The boxy structure leans slightly away from the boundary wall in a gesture of politeness to its closest neighbour and along with the dark cladding lends the project the name Pitched Black.

A turntable positioned below the overhang allows their car to be manoeuvred easily. While an expensive undertaking, it’s one that Cannon feels unlocked the potential of the site, freeing up space for a garden rather than turning space.

The curvature of the turntable and tilt of the upper storey became motifs in the project, carried through into the landscaping of the garden, which comprises a series of curving brick walls that define different zones — a patio, barbecue area and pool. A boundary fence made from slanted boards mirrors the off-kilter cladding it faces.

The curvaceous floorpan has been translated into brass door pulls milled using a CNC machine at Gruff’s studio, and cast into concrete to create an overflow for the guttering. In the kitchen, a boxy cabinet suspended on criss-crossing blue cord reads as a loose interpretation of the whole house.

“The house gave us the opportunity to experiment, have fun, indulge ourselves in some of the design details that we would like to do for client projects that are in some cases a little bit more expensive,” says Cannon.

Windows are positioned to frame architectural details carefully and retain privacy. One at the foot of the wooden staircase looks out at the blue stilts, while upstairs, slanted windows emphasise the lean of the building and offer unexpected glimpses of gardens.

The best view is reserved for the master bathroom, which has one entirely glazed wall facing into the treetops along the railway.

Rooms are split across three modestly scaled levels with four bedrooms and bathrooms located on the upper floor, an open-planned lounge, dining area and kitchen at ground level and a workspace/guest room adjacent to a den and utility space in the basement, which came later in the thought process.

“It’s about trying to squeeze in what we needed for a house with five people. It just felt too tight without.”

“There’s a lot of hurdles to jump with self-build. You’ve got to have confidence that can get over those hurdles, whether it be planning, financial, or technical issues,” says Cannon.

“The massive advantage of being an architect is that we’re able to manage those risks — whether it’s financially possible or whether it was possible from a planning perspective.”

With the hurdles behind them, the home feels fit for the family, close to work and schools, and in the area they’d come to see as home. “We weren’t sitting on a fortune in order to do this, we’re mortgaged to the same level as any normal family in a similar position. To get to this point we had to risk a lot, but it’s all paid off,” says Cannon.

Pitched Black is taking part in Open House London this weekend, head to openhouselondon.open-city.org.uk to book a free ticket

Contact book

Architect: Gruff Architects

Contractor: Marval Developments

Structural engineer: Built Engineers

Stilt/blue leg fabricator: Art Fabs

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