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The
clients had bought a large Victorian house which had seen better
days. It had been extended so as to make the original front the
back of the house and vice versa. There had been a number of
proposals to extend the family house, but at the expense of the
character of the building and the spacious landscape.
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This
courtyard was to link with the rear garden and be flanked by a
new service wing including office, shower and utility rooms. The
courtyard was to be presided over by a large kitchen extension
with curved glass to mirror the curves on the courtyard wall.
The planners also agreed to overlook their policy and allow the
double garage to be situated on the road boundary – instead of
adjacent to the house. |
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Richard
Twinch proposed a radical
solution, to return the house to its
original plan with the formal entrance from the garden side and
a new courtyard created on the service side facing the road.
This would separate cars and pedestrians and provide visual
privacy (double decker buses) and security from the road.
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Materials
match the original house – hand made brick in bands of orange
alternated with dark ‘headers’. Roofs are clay tiles to
match the existing, and the vertical tiling with courses of
scalloped hand made tiles, are modelled on a building adjacent
to University Parks in Oxford. The kitchen roof is made of
coated zinc. Curved glass for the doors was found to be just too expensive, so a
compromise was achieved that provided elegant turned columns on
a polygonal plan – that complements the curved zinc upstand
above. |
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