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	Housing Private Houses Two Houses St. Monica's Penthouse Phelan Barker, Essex Barge & Murphy Apartment Michaelides Apartment Levine Apartment Education Healthcare Commercial Arts & Culture Leisure & Exhibitions Adaptive Reuse Regeneration Urban Design Phelan Barker House, Essex Short-listed for an RIBA Award for Architecture in 2001, this house in a conservation area offers a flexible solution to compressing double the amount of spaces required by the brief into half the amount of space available. The brief for this house for a young couple and their baby required two living areas, dining room, kitchen, three bedrooms, a possible studio, bathroom and ground floor WC. Located on the main street in Tollesbury, near the Essex coast, this simple rectangular plan with a pitched roof is both economical and responds to the vernacular. To the north, a thick wall of storage with small windows above forms a buffer to the traffic noise. To the south the house opens up, with living spaces on two levels opening to the garden. The ground floor comprises a single space, the sitting area focused on a fireplace within a 2-storey volume. On the first the space is characterised by a generous landing which can be used as a play room, studio and second living room. A master bedroom and two children's bedrooms designed as alcoves, open out from this landing. Each room overlooks this room to the garden beyond and each benefits from the generosity of this space, is open to the roof ridge, whilst being efficient in its own right. Materials are expressive of the place: red brick with deep set windows for the street elevation and lower storey to the west with black stained weatherboarding for the remainder of the envelope. A natural blue slate roof completes the house. The project was published in Building Design (7 Sept 2001).