A striking red-brick cube stands on a backstreet corner in Peckham, south London, its walls appearing to dissolve as they rise towards the top, where trailing plants spill through the brickwork, their dangling foliage giving it the air of an overgrown ruin.
Part monolithic block, part gossamer screen, this arresting house is the work of Surman Weston, a pair of young architects who, tired of answering to clients and contractors, decided to design and build this experimental home themselves.
“We always had a dream of doing a project without a client, and without handing everything over to the builders,” says Percy Weston, who lives in the house with his partner and three-year-old son (although the house is jointly owned with his fellow architect, Tom Surman). “We wanted to be able to decide things on site and experiment live as we went along,” says Weston. “So we put all our life savings, and the money from our 10 years of practice, into giving it a go.”
