Dune House

The clearly identifiable concept was for a dark top hat to be seated on a perimeter-glass ground floor storey. This naturally informed the structural response, which was devised with a set-back concrete core and first floor slab supporting a CLT first floor and roof structure. Slender steel sections hidden behind the façade helped to support the slab edge and limit deflections and a finite element analysis assisted in thinning the 9m spanning first floor slab to 250mm, reducing load and material costs. A raft foundation bears directly on the sand.

Structural engineering by Jane Wernick Associates, now part of engineersHRW.