Manor Farm

Proctor and Matthews, Buckinghamshire, 1999

 

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A modern family house that integrates itself with the farms variety of existing building styles 

David Churchill (website)     Download Original

  • A modern family house that integrates itself with the farms variety of existing building styles    
  • The architecture busily articulates every external surface, creating a smaller scale    
  • The conservatory has as much the feel of a corridor as a room    
  • The gallery, complete with one of the client’s new partitions    
  • The living room with courtyard beyond, showing one of two timber frames. There are windows on all sides     
  • The house focuses on the client’s landscaping. Render echoes local earth walls    
  • The small water garden outside the front door    
  • Site plan    
  • Ground floor    
  • First floor    
  • Section    
  • Model    
  • Conservatory detail    
  • Detail through conservatory and concrete shelf wall     

A modern family house that integrates with existing farm buildings in a variety of styles

The new house is surrounded by an array of rendered walls which use the colours of the local earth walling. The structure is timber post and beam.

The massing of the buildings makes less attempt to integrate old and new. The older buildings – tithe barn, manor house, granary – are relatively large, simple volumes. The new house busily breaks up and articulates every external surface, creating a smaller scale.

This scaling is reflected in the choice of materials. The restricted palette of the older buildings contrasts with the multiple walling, opening and roofing treatments for the new building.

In plan the focus of the house is the courtyard and southerly views beyond. On the ground floor, the kitchen-diner’s courtyard wall has deep niches inside and out that can hold plants.

Corridors then run either side of a storage wall past several cellular rooms to the living space. These corridors can be seen as winter and summer routes, the summer route doubling as a conservatory, with a structurally glazed roof using two laminated glass beams.

Data

  • Begun: Sep 1997
  • Completed: Feb 1999
  • Floor area: 266m2
  • Sector: House
  • Total cost: £196,360
  • Tender date: Apr 1997
  • Procurement: JCT Intermediate Contract 1984 edition
  • Address: Church End, Buckinghamshire, HP17 8AH, United Kingdom

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