Staircase, River House

Having lived in the area for a number of years, our clients took the opportunity to purchase a site overlooking the entrance to Chichester Harbour. The brief is for a large family house with generous room sizes, and in particular to maximise the views overlooking the Harbour and Ichenor Reach. The architectural style of the property uses a combination of brick and timber cladding, and makes use of the flint vernacular of the area. A large overhanging timber roof completes the composition.

The relatively long spans and wide window openings meant that a conventional timber and masonry house would not have worked well, requiring deep floor zones. Instead, after careful study, we have developed a scheme that has a primary steel frame structure, that supports timber floors, and laterally braced by the masonry external walls. This system allows the floor structural depths to be minimised, yet still allowing services to be integrated into the structural zone in a traditional way. The use of box section steel columns means that they can be simply and cleanly enclosed within the 100 millimetre thick inner leaf of the external walls and internal partitions. Because of the presence of London Clay and some large trees, the foundation system comprises small diameter bored piles, supporting a reinforced concrete flat raft. Such a system is quick to construct and allows flexibility in the final positioning of steel columns.

This structural system has worked well on a number of similar projects, allowing swift construction of the primary structure, but still using a vernacular familiar to contractors used to projects of this size a nature.

Architect Yeates Design
Client Private Clients
Project Value £1.75 million

Photographs  Keith Collie / Barton Engineers