Bumpers Oast

Kent-style tiles in six shades have been used to create the exterior skin, slowly fading from dark red at the base to orange in the centre and blue towards the sky. Laying the tiles relied heavily on local craft skills to create smooth transitions from rectangular tiles for the cylinders to increasingly tapering tiles for the cones.

Much of the interior of the roundels is clad in plywood, continuous ply in the cylinders and plywood shingles in the cones. Curved furniture is built into the rooms to make the best use of the space. The building has a finely-layered transition from open to private.

The oasts form open pockets of communal space on the ground floor, shared spaces on the first floor, and secluded treehouse-like retreats on the second floor. Each of the bedroom spaces are located in a roof cone and arranged over two levels. In the children’s rooms, this creates a play space on the lower level that can later be adapted for study, while the master bedroom is designed with a walk-in wardrobe and en suite bathroom.

The building is highly insulated, and designed to passivehouse standards of air-tightness, with the oast cones used to encourage slow air movement and purge ventilation from high level openings during the summer.