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VMZINC Raises Hind House
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Hind House’s position on the banks of the River Loddon, near Wargrave is on flood plain, so the design involved construction on raised columns. Living, guest and bedroom spaces have been created in ‘wings’ that adopt a pinwheel form. The steel framed, structure is clad in zinc and cedar, VMZINC’s standing seam cladding system in Quartz-Zinc® having been used, most notably the entrance section. This is pushed forward to receive an entrance staircase to an open, timber lined hood, with a glazed room to the side containing a guest suite and gym. The house, which was completed in December 2008, has recently won the RIBA Southern Region Award for design, the judges having commended its unique design and response to a difficult site subjected to seasonal flooding.
Architect Henry Goss of John Pardey Architects commented “For the Hind House project we were again looking to specify a palette of natural building materials. We have used zinc cladding before and so were familiar with its intrinsic benefits. Having assessed the performance and appearance of other metals, we find that those such as aluminium are not as robust, relying as they do on anodised or powder coated finishes. Unlike other projects, traditional ageing and weathering in the vernacular style was not the aim, as we wanted the project to retain a modern, showpiece appearance. We liked the colour range and texture of VM Zinc’s pre-weathered cladding and as we wanted to retain the contrast between the timber and metal colours, opted for a combination of the dark Anthra-Zinc and light natural cedar. The end result is restrained but distinctive. Zinc offers very clear benefits in terms of long-term performance, and the end result could not have been achieved using any other metal”.
