Our coastal residence has been recognised at this year's regional design awards, an honour we share with everyone who helped bring the project from sketch to site. Awards are never the reason we do the work, but this one landed on a project we care about, judged by people whose opinion we respect.

The project

The winning house was praised for its restraint and its sensitivity to a difficult, beautiful site — qualities that are easy to talk about and hard to hold onto through eighteen months of construction.

It is a modest building by square footage but an uncompromising one in detail, and it asked a great deal of everyone involved. Seeing it recognised for exactly the qualities we fought hardest to protect is its own quiet vindication.

What the jury said

The jury singled out the building's quiet relationship to its landscape and its disciplined material palette, noting that the design "knows exactly when to stop." We couldn't ask for a kinder summary of what we were after.

They also highlighted the house's environmental performance — a reminder that restraint and responsibility tend to be the same decision viewed from different angles.

A shared credit

Awards land on a single name, but buildings never do. Our thanks go to the clients who trusted the idea, the consultants who tested it, and the trades who built it to a standard the drawings only hoped for.

Where it leaves us

Recognition is pleasant; it is not a destination. If the award does anything useful, it is to remind us which instincts to trust on the next project — and to hold the line on the small, unglamorous decisions that, added up, are what the jury actually noticed.