Red Cow Terrace
Creating new homes in an English conservation area
Office S&M explore the design details chosen for Red Cow Terrace.
Introducing strong colour into historic settings is perceived as risky. But that didn’t stop Office S&M at their project Red Cow Terrace in St Albans, the English town with ancient Roman roots and many listed buildings. Office S&M co-founder Hugh McEwen explains his thinking behind the design of three new homes in a conservation area.
When you started the project, you did a thorough character study of the area. What did you discover here?
HM: With these studies, we’re looking for things that make a setting different and even unique. That could be the building vernacular and materials that are used locally. This scheme is in Wheathampstead, a historic village with plenty of notable buildings. We found this language of tarred weatherboarding, chimneys and masonry plinths, big roof forms and overhanging eaves. And we discovered that the site itself used to be known as Red Cow Field.
How did you apply what you found to the design and colour choices for these new homes?
HM: We took that idea of the workers’ cottage and played with that. We chose dark materials for the upper parts of the homes, cladding them with Shou Sugi Ban® charred timber shingles. They’ve been laid in a slightly offset pattern, and that creates a more textured effect than standard weatherboarding.
The oxblood red detailing is obviously a reference to the site’s historic name. We selected a gloss deep red for the metalwork (code: AE30013301120 in RAL3011), we tend to use polyester powder-coated aluminium. Coating metalwork is a way of introducing something special but in an affordable way.
