RX Architects Fixes Druim House's Rear with Reoriented Stair

Seven years after RX Architects completed Druim in Sussex, the firm has returned to fix the problems the original budget left behind: a rear garden cut off from the interior and an entrance sequence that never fully worked.

The house originally faced outward, toward a nature reserve and the sea. That orientation suited the site. But budget constraints at the time meant the back of the house went unresolved. The new Druim extension addresses both failures at once.

The most consequential change is not the new room itself but the route through the house to reach it. A reoriented stair and a glazed link between the main house and the annexe reorganize circulation from the moment of arrival. A boot room now anchors the entrance, giving the threshold between outside and inside a purpose it previously lacked. The path from front door to dining room passes through a logical sequence rather than an improvised one — a distinction easy to miss in photographs but felt immediately in daily use.

The new dining space sits at the rear, wrapped in full-height glazing and sliding doors that open onto a patio and the garden. Studio director Rob Pollard described the goal plainly: "The main opportunity was to enhance the private rear gardens and connections to the northern aspect to the outside space." The room centers on a solid wood table set under a large skylight, with a log burner alongside.

The glazing is substantial, but timber-clad soffits and a continuous ceiling pull the space down to human scale, defining its enclosure without blocking the view. A corner window seat is the quieter move in the scheme and arguably the more considered one. Positioned where the extension meets the original structure, it creates a pause point — a place to sit within the glazed perimeter without being exposed to it. The soffits overhead reinforce that sense of shelter.

The coastal setting shapes the logic of the plan. The front aspect bears the brunt of the wind, while the rear garden offers a different relationship with the outdoors entirely — precisely what Pollard and his team came back to resolve.

Continuity drove the execution. "We wanted the new adaptations to tie in seamlessly with the original house," said Pollard. The firm used the same contractor and the same materials on the extension. The result reads as a single build rather than a second phase.

For anyone planning a similar project, Druim's lesson is clear: the area you add matters less than the problems you map before you add it. Circulation, outdoor-use patterns, and the gaps left by an earlier budget are worth resolving on paper before a single new wall goes up.