The site is beautiful and demanded something special to support and complement it. The client’s vision was for a building sympathetic to the sensitive setting whilst embodying a sense of fun, and the excitement of a magical secret woodland home.
The clients had fallen in love with the beautiful secluded site on the outskirts of the market town of Morpeth in Northumberland and so did we; steeply sloping and edged by woodland, it is a wonderful, challenging context with a brief to create a family home sympathetic to the setting whilst embodying the excitement of a magical woodland hideaway.
The building reacts to the contours of the site, with arrival separated from the private south facing kitchen-terrace, and the garden to the north exploiting the only flat section of the site.
There is an intentionally rich palette of materials; like a Bewick woodcut or the woodland texture around it, the building is made of different grains and surfaces; natural but under precise control with slate tile cladding to the lower sections and timber above.
The cruciform arrangement divides the site into areas of varying privacy and the material treatments give the appearance of a series of single-storey volumes, reducing the perceived impact on the site whilst creating a playful relationship; slate and brick belong to the earth while the timber elements are of the woods and sky, like a treehouse floating above.
Our feel for the site, approach to design and the finished building bring to mind a quote by Peter Zumthor;
‘I immerse myself in the place and try to inhabit it in my imagination, and at the same time I look beyond it at the world of my other places. When I come across a building that has developed a special presence in connection with the place it stands in, I sometimes feel that it is imbued with an inner tension that refers to something over and above the place itself. It seems to be part of the essence of its place, and at the same time it speaks of the world as a whole.’
We were very aware of the responsibility of designing a scheme in such a beautiful context, and to meet the needs of such a lovely family. We are contemporary architects, but have a particular interest in historic, rural and vernacular influences, and are constantly seeking to find an appropriate way to add to the layers of history, rather than trying to recreate them or to provide a solution which is too disconnected from its environment. We are therefore proud of what has been achieved at the dell.
SHORTLISTED
RIBA Awards 2017
SHORTLISTED
RIBA Awards 2018
