Mill Hide – a private home designed by architect Tim Poulson has won the Greater Cambridge Design and Construction Awards 2025 for Best New Building Under £3m. The project was also Highly Commended in the Craftmanship Award Category.

The elegant building features an inclined wide-trussed timber rafter roof with a 20-square-metre glazed skylight at its centre, all supported via an efficient steel frame. The sustainable and lightweight roof choice allowed for internal columns to be minimised, facilitating column-free spaces (upwards of 12 metres in span) to create a modern, open feel to the interior of the building.

The outside is clad in CorTen, a unique type of carbon steel specially formulated to develop a protective layer of rust – which not only protects the deeper portions of the steel from succumbing to corrosion, but also gives a beautiful reddish-brown coating. In the context of this project, the natural look of the material has an immediate resonance with generations of agricultural buildings and the familiar farmyard Dutch Barn. Structurally, the rust layer also serves to connect separate steel sections across joins, so that within a year or two, a structure could become one solid piece, which will be extremely rigid and durable. Due to the corrosion protection, the design life of the cladding can be as high as 150 years with minimal maintenance.

The judges described the house as: “A domestic project implemented with enormous thought and precision, exquisite materials and clean, classical design.The interior of the house is modelled on the precise dimensions of the Villa Rotunda in Vicenza, with invisible joints and connections to create a calm, consistent finish; the porcelain-lined bathrooms and limestone floors are exquisitely tooled; and the Corten steel exterior, surrounded by a finned colonnade, has rusted to a pleasing patina. The cool, white interior atrium can be opened to the sky. It is a personal passion project, and supremely worthy of its commendation.”