Banya and Garden Studio

Cooke Fawcett Ltd

Camden, 2023

Shortlisted

Longlisted

Housing the traditional elements of a Russian ‘Banya’—including sauna, bucket shower, and plunge pool—as well as a garden studio, this unusual and inventive project was designed by architects Cooke Fawcett incollaboration with interior designers Black and Milk. Set among mature trees, whose locations inform its angled geometry, the building is broken up into what appears as two volumes externally. This subtle fragmentation articulates the key components of the scheme. Creating a building that feels embedded in the woodland was central to the design.

Discretely located at the north end of the garden of Kebony House — itself a recent timber-clad addition to a 19th Century villa — the building’s design continues the kebony wood cladding and is sensitivity integrated into its mature garden setting.

Responding to the tree locations and the sloping site has generated a highly specific pair of structures that feel fresh and unexpected, and very much ‘of the site’. The roof profile follows the sloping landscape, and the resultant forms, together with the choice of timber as both an exterior and interior material, reinforce the idea of an escape to nature.

“The garden room has large, glazed sliding doors that draw light from the garden into the interior. A large bespoke wrap-over rooflight/window to the rear provides a dramatic framed view of the extensive woodlands behind.”

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