When Whiteacre Developments Ltd began planning two large, high-end homes in Dorridge, West Midlands, they wanted to create spacious, modern properties with fully usable attic rooms. Their original design was heavily steel-dependent, but Wyckham Blackwell was able to deliver a fully engineered trussed rafter alternative that preserved the architect’s original internal layouts, without the costly large cranked steel beams. Wyckham Blackwell were proud to win the 2025 TRA Roofscape Design Award for Residential Project of the Year for providing this clever timber solution.

Plot 1 has a 220m² footprint with a 94m² attic room, and Plot 2 is 215m² with a 90m² attic. The third-storey attic rooms are fully usable spaces, designed to accommodate a gym, home cinema, guest bedrooms and bathrooms. Plot 1 used full-span Attic Trusses spanning 10.56m to achieve an attic room width of 8.513m, while Plot 2, with a more complex internal layout, required a combination of half-span Attic Trusses bearing onto a central loadbearing wall.

A steep 55° roof pitch was used to maximise head height in the attic and avoid Dormer construction, helping the homes comply with local height restrictions. These homes feature vaulted ceilings above the hallways and master bedrooms, as well as multiple rooflights across both pitched and flat roof areas to enhance natural light.

One of the most complex steel elements of the original design – a large ridge beam specified for the vaulted master bedrooms – was replaced with a bespoke 3-ply ‘Wolf Chord’ timber beam, highlighting the ability of the Wyckham Blackwell team to provide a timber engineered solution no matter how complex the project is.

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