A house in New Zealand

This is a design for a new house in Christchurch, New Zealand.  Under construction in 2023-24, the house draws carefully on the brief of the young family who are our clients, who have a very strong interest in classical architecture and design.

We worked very closely with them over several months during the pandemic – with regular video-conferencing to share ideas and development – proving that it is absolutely possible to design a perfect house remotely, if needs be. Construction starts in the spring of 2023 and we hope that upon completion this will be one of the finest new homes to be built in the fine city of Christchurch.

We have gone on to work on a large number of masterplanning projects for the same client, who owns an innovative, highly design-focused development company, Brooksfield, that is helping to rebuild Christchurch after the earthquake damage of 2011.

A Marine Villa

This is a design for a highly contemporary seaside villa on an astonishing site on the South coast, in the New Forest.

Under construction in 2023-4, the building is conceived as a simple, timber-framed, single storey pavilion, which has a very simple plan form designed to take advantage of amazing views over the Solent. The underlying plan and elevations have a powerful classical proportioning system.  Walls are clad in oak shingle and to the rear of the house is a brick-walled garden courtyard to provide warmth and shelter against coastal breezes.

Our initial design for the site is shown below.  Originally, our clients wanted a classical building, and we designed a carefully-considered Marine Villa based on an extremely authentic study of John Nash’s Italianate villas, with particular reference to Cronkhill, on the Attingham Estate, now owned by the National Trust.  After a period of real reflection, the owners decided they wanted to live in a much more contemporary building and we were thrilled that they trusted us with the design of the second proposal for the site.

The former house on the site was a 1930s seaside bungalow and we worked closely with planning officers in the National Park in designing both iterations of the building.

A New House in Moscow

In 2012, we were invited to design a house on a prominent site in a forested suburb of Moscow. The client’s brief had already been established and tight parameters agreed with local authorities for the size, scale and massing of the building.

Based closely on the agreed scheme, which had the qualities of a giant ‘McMansion’ shared by so much new construction in the enclave, we refined the building and applied architecturally correct Classical detail to create a building that was a refined an coherent essay in Doric architecture. Greek and Roman Doric detailing is combined throughout the building, each playing against the other.

Construction commenced in 2012 and all the architectural cast detail was manufactured in the United Kingdom for export to the site.