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. Also, short runs of terraces were typical of the area.

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. The plinths are clad in a ceramic glazed tiling, as are the ‘chimneys’, which are actually lightwells above the staircases. The red diamond shape on the side of the terrace is intended to look like a rune, to give a sense of an imagined history of the place. These ‘runes’ are trellises, to allow plants to grow up the building.

We feel that the combination of richly coloured glazed tiles and burnt timber shingles creates something new.

Some people associate historic buildings with muted colours. Is that misplaced? 

HM: There’s an assumption that historically, buildings in the UK were black and white, and it’s just not the case. A lot of historic architecture is incredibly colourful. Victorian buildings like pumping stations and underground stations were polychromatic and really celebratory. For us, doing research and digging up an honest response is a lot more valuable than having a predetermined idea.