Castle High House Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, West Wales luxury home, New Welsh property, Architecture project
Castle High House in Pembrokeshire
26 Aug 2021
Architecture: Hyde + Hyde Architects
Location: Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Wales, UK
Images by Chris McClean and Hyde + Hyde Architects
Castle High House, Pembrokeshire Property
Out on the fringe of south west Wales overlooking the Irish Sea, a cool white concrete home hovers effortlessly over a Coastal National Park in Pembrokeshire. The monolithic form of the Castle High home exudes a sense of luxury and refuge, indifferent to the storms that blow in from Atlantic shores.
Large expanses of frameless glass open up the home to the rugged cliffs, sandy beaches and wild inland hills. It is a symbiotic home of weight and lightness that frames the character and essence of natural phenomena – such as light wind and rain.
Castle High a smallholding is located within Pembrokeshire Coast National Park with panoramic views of the Atlantic.
The traditional Welsh farm is centred around a courtyard providing protection from the constant South-Westerly Atlantic Storms that push over an ancient landscape.
The abandoned farm buildings themselves remain relatively unchanged since the early 1800’s.
The practice was approached to refurbish the outbuildings and provide a luxurious and practical contemporary home to replace an existing out-dated and 1960’s house.
Our design completes the courtyard and provides a sustainable lifestyle for the family, by utilising passive architectural strategies and low carbon technologies and a deeply rooted poetic response to place.
Our proposal reinforces the defensibility of the existing outbuildings and reawakens an otherwise sleeping courtyard.
The exposed site calls for a building material and stereotomic language that can endure years of constant erosion from driving wind and rain.
The new home itself is built from white fair-faced concrete, inspired by the enduring nature of a smooth pebble found along the shoreline. These glacial debris reminds us of what mass can endure through time, yet it still feels smooth to the touch. The plastic nature of concrete also allows us to push limits not allowed by stone. Creating a simple language that recalls the deep brooding reveals of farmhouse windows in the region.
Castle High House in Pembrokeshire, Wales – Building Information
Design: Hyde + Hyde Architects
Site size: 5700 sqm
Completion date: 2020
Building levels: 2
Images: Chris McClean and Hyde + Hyde Architects
Castle High House, Pembrokeshire, Wales images / information received 260821 from Hyde + Hyde Architects
Location: Pembrokeshire, south west Wales, UK
Welsh Architecture
Contemporary Architecture in South Wales – architectural selection below:
Welsh Architecture Designs – chronological list
Ice Cream Research Building, the Black Mountains
Design: Hyde + Hyde Architects
image courtesy of architects practice
Ice Cream Research Facility Black Mountains
Arthur’s Cave Pop-up Hotel Cabin, Castell y Bere
image courtesy of architects
Welsh Pop-up Hotel Cabin
Cardiff University Innovation Campus
Design: HawkinsBrown ; HOK ; BDP ; DPP
image from architecture office
Cardiff University Innovation Campus
National Assembly for Wales design by architect Richard Rogers
Maggies Wales Building design by Kisho Kurokawa
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