An Arts and Crafts House

We were asked to prepare designs for this large new house by a prominent property developer in Ireland. The site, to the south west of Dublin, is in stunning country with beautiful views to the Wicklow Mountains.

The client has a love of Arts and Crafts architecture and wanted a building that drew references from Lutyens, Baillie Scott and their contemporaries.

Two low wings form an entrance court at the end of a long, sweeping drive. Upon entering, the house unfolds as a series of discrete yet interconnected rooms that offer small private spaces at the same time as allowing for large parties.

Very tall leaded light windows open up towards the south west. Walls are in local granite and limewashed render, under a graduated stone roof. At the top of the house a promenade tower allows spectacular views across to the Wicklow Mountains.

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.

A classic country house

This is the initial design for a beautiful site in Cheshire. Our clients had expressed a strong interest in the architecture of Belton House, the famous country house near Grantham in Lincolnshire, and together we designed a contemporary reinterpretation of a classic H-shaped house with a central hall and two flanking wings.

The entrance front, facing parkland and a lake, is in stone, with side elevations and the garden front in a softer red brick and stone.  To the side is a flanking service wing.  We worked with the renowned landscape designer Jinny Blom on the setting of the building within pleasure gardens and a wider parkland estate plan.

The planning application, for a replacement dwelling within the Green Belt, would have been under the Paragraph 80 ‘Exceptional Country Houses’ approach, but following significant discussions with officers, and with our clients, we have designed a smaller house with a less imposing architectural character for resubmission in 2023.