Will Gamble Architects renovates holiday home perched on Cornish rock stack

UK studio Will Gamble Architects has refurbished The Island, an old holiday home in Cornwall that sits on a rock stack and is accessed via its own suspension bridge.

Located off the coast of Newquay, the 100-year-old bungalow has been updated and extended after several years of use as a private residence and more recently as a holiday rental.

Will Gamble Architects' design aims to celebrate the home's original character and the heritage of its unusual 21-metre-high site, which was connected to a bridge in the early 1900s and originally home to a small tea room.

"Our client approached us with a unique but challenging brief to double the footprint of this charming bungalow without changing its visual appearance from the coastline," founder Will Gamble told Dezeen.

"With expensive electricity bills and no gas supply, this building also needed a deep retrofit to upgrade it thermally and reduce its energy consumption," he added.

Without heavily altering the home's exterior, Will Gamble Architects reconfigured the ground floor to improve the holiday home's connection to the sea, with a new entrance aligning with the bridge. The former entrance has been transformed into a large arched window.

This reconfiguration has created a sequence of views that immediately frame the sea upon entry, set against a minimalist backdrop of white-painted interiors.

Several interior openings mirror the arched detail of the former entrance.

"The building faced the wrong way and needed reorienting to better connect with its unique environment and the far-reaching views of the surrounding seascape," Gamble said.

"This embodied the underlying ambitions of this project, and the lengths that we have gone to retain the character of this building, while significantly reorienting the existing spaces to improve its relationship with the surrounding environment," he added.

Instead of adding a floor, the majority of the new spaces are accommodated within The Island's existing roof space by lowering ceilings in parts of the ground floor. Two bedrooms tucked into the gable ends are finished with full-height glazing.

The main bedroom extends slightly into a new volume, which is positioned within the valley of the roof to conceal it from view. It is clad in red-coated steel cladding to match the existing roof tiles and withstand the harsh coastal environment.

Projecting from the roof of The Island is a tower-like form with a porthole-style window that references the nearby Huers Hut – a watch tower historically used to spot shoals of pilchards.

Alongside the upgrading of the existing building's insulation, Will Gamble Architects also added solar panels to its roof and rainwater harvesting tanks that irrigate the surrounding gardens.

Will Gamble Architects was founded by Gamble in London in 2018. Its other work with historic structures includes the "unashamedly contemporary" extension of a Grade II-listed farmhouse in Hertfordshire.

Elsewhere in Cornwall, Rundell Associates used stone and cross-laminated timber for a family home embedded into a cliffside and Hugh Strange Architects drew on farm architecture for a courtyard home.

The photography is by Chris Wharton.

The post Will Gamble Architects renovates holiday home perched on Cornish rock stack appeared first on Dezeen.