Viva Brighton Issue #38 April 2016

icks and Mortar
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Shoreham self-build
‘It almost seems to grow up out of the beach’
This striking building, with its ‘glass box’
upstairs living space and cosy, sheltered lower
level, is home to civil servant Catherine and
pilot Adas Nicholson. The house, situated on
Shoreham Beach, was built on the site of the
bungalow they had been living in for five years
previously. After 18 months of discussion and
drawing up ideas with local architect Giles Ings
of ABIR Architects, they began the year-long
project of building their dream home.
“It’s very important to build something that’s
right for the area it’s in,” says Giles. “What
frustrates me is when large-scale housing
developers put up these buildings and call them
‘products’, and they look the same wherever
they’re built.” The lower level of the house is
clad in cages – which had to be specially-made
using stainless steel to stand up to the salty sea
air – filled with pebbles. The team spent a long
time searching for locally-dredged pebbles
which would look just like the ones in Shoreham,
so that when you look at the house from
the shore, the building almost seems to grow up
out of the beach.
Behind the pebbles is an innovative blockwork
system introduced by builder Tim, who lives
just across the road and has worked on several
houses along this stretch. It uses hollow blocks
made out of crushed wood pallets, which are
built up to form a wall, before being filled with
insulation and concrete. The combination
serves to keep the lower level of the house at a
constant temperature very effectively, but the
bigger design challenge was the south-facing
first-floor living space.
“We spent a lot of time on the thermal calculations,”
explains Giles, “working out how to
stop the upstairs room from getting too hot
during the summer.” One part of the solution
was a solar coating on the large window panes,
which stops too much heat from coming in. But
there’s an even more complex system at work,
hidden within the ceilings. The whole house is
fitted with a heat-recovery system, which draws
in hot stale air through ceiling vents, extracts the
heat and uses it to warm up the fresh air coming
into the property. The house also uses an airsource
heat pump, which is basically a fridge in
reverse; using low-grade heat from the air from
outdoors and transferring it for use through the
underfloor heating and hot water systems.
Although Catherine and Adas don’t consider
their project to be quite finished – there’s still
an ensuite to fit and some finishing touches to
complete – it’s safe to say the project has been
a success. “It’s a big investment and you really
want it to work out. When you’re building
your own home it’s very difficult to make any
compromises, but this is the house that we want
to live in forever.” Rebecca Cunningham
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