River House

The design was landscape-led, substantially reducing the amount of built form and hard landscape across the site, taking the observation on new British housing by Germany’s Cultural attaché Hermann Muthesius, written in 1904 that, ‘The aim is to adapt the closely to its surroundings and to attempt to make house and garden into a unified, closely-knit whole.’  His critique and admiration of the English free architecture that produced the Arts and Crafts masterpieces of Shaw, Lethaby and Lutyens was brought to world attention. Over a century later the idea of uniting house and garden – architecture and nature – is more relevant than ever.

Our design for the house seeks to completely re-imagine the country house – building from an architectural legacy and utilising modern methods of construction.

A modest arrival courtyard, a hard-surfaced area with planting creates a simple yet serene sense of place. A single-storey block sits behind a stone wall containing service spaces and parking (out of sight) for two cars.

The concept for the house itself begins with the idea of creating a singular object-like form that sits within the woodland clearing – an enigmatic, floating box above a shaded ground floor space. This ground floor is fully glazed with closed ‘boxes’ containing a snug and an office set within the centre of the space as if a giant piece of furniture – so we too furnish our open ground plane with a series of ‘objects’ so that by their placement, kitchen, dining and living spaces occupy the spaces in-between.

Living spaces are therefore visually and spiritually enclosed by the trees, uniting people and nature. It is deeply recessed below the oversailing upper floor, providing solar shade and avoiding the possibility of glare when seen from the river.