Broombank by SOUP Architects offers sweeping river views

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Stacked cubes at the entrance to this English house by SOUP Architects reveal little of its riverside setting, in order to save expansive views of the water from inside as a surprise.
Broombank by SOUP Architects is accessed by a long, narrow lane and set into a marshy bank of the River Alde in Suffolk, with broad views that unfold upon entrance.
"The client wanted the house to have a bold, almost urban entrance that gave little away of the landscape beyond," architect Patrick Walls told Dezeen.
"That view is kept and created by the front entrance. Upon entrance, you move through to the main living space, which then opens out to the wide landscape," Walls said.
The two-storey house, which replaces a poorly extended home on the site, was designed for a woman with two children, who shares the property with her partner.
"She splits her time between London and Suffolk, and has done so for the last 15 to 20 years, so the main aim of the project was to consider the next major phase in life as the family grows," explained Walls. "The brief was to create a more substantial, flexible house in Aldeburgh to spend a greater amount of time with family and friends."
The lower level is clad in handmade bricks by Danish company Petersen and topped with a sedum roof, which slopes down to the ground at the edges to blur the boundary between the building and the surrounding marshland.
"We settled quickly on the idea that the ground floor would sit into the banks of the sloped site, and that the more compact first floor would sit on top like two white sugar cubes," said Walls.
Inside, an oak-lined entrance hall conceals storage and features a corner of glazing that wraps up the front of the house and over the ceiling to bring direct light into the centre of the plan.
This leads to a large living area, with an open-plan kitchen and dining space, and a living room at the side. Glass sliding doors stretch the width of this space and open on to a terrace, where a section of the house juts out at an angle to provide a covered corner at one end.
A restrained palette of materials has been used in the living space, including power-floated concrete floor, which has been colour-matched as closely as possible with the exterior bricks.
"From the outset we always knew that the greenery, the tall grasses and the sky would be very important elements within the space, and so to counter that we have tried to create a very cool and very calm interior space that's quite neutral," said Walls.
A yellow kitchen island was added to enliven the neutral space.
"We wanted it to work as a focal point within the loose living space. An anchor between the landscape and the calm interior palette," said Walls.
A sliding oak wall allows the occupants to close the living space off from the entrance hall, which also has three bedrooms and two bathrooms arranged around it.
A white powder-coated steel staircase leads from the entrance upstairs, and features glass balustrades fixed into the bottom of the stairs, which avoided the need for a handrail at the top.
The top floor has a master bedroom and bathroom on one side of the stairwell, and a snug on the other side, which serves as an alternative living space and opens onto a terrace, offering more expansive views of the river and marshland.
The snug also doubles as a guest bedroom when required, and features an internal balcony overlooking the entrance hall, to improve connections between the two floors.
At the back, a long pool has been lined with black tiles so that it appears deeper and creates reflections of the sky on the surface.
"The pool was included within the brief at the outset and this allowed us to consider it as an integral part of the house and landscape," said Walls. "Its position against the sloped bank works well in drawing the eye out towards the view."
Solar water panels on the roof provide hot water for the house, and the sedum roof helps to insulate it. The concrete flooring also helps to create even temperatures year-ro