An Architect's Hidden Family Home Built Into A Hillside

foreign [Music] Luxton and Welcome to our house which we designed and built about four years ago when you stand up on the common which is behind us as you look across here you don't really understand that there's a house here at all it's tucked right down into the landscape it's kind of a real mix of architecture and nature that's I suppose what sums it up so we should get another look inside I didn't really want a massive big door it's it's really just sort of tucked away on the side here and you sort of disappear in the cladding is English Ash they cook it for two weeks at about 130 degrees to drive out all the sugars and all the moisture and then it goes from being a very short lasting wood to being a wood with a lifespan of about 50 60 years once you come inside the thing you really notice I suppose is this wonderful long wall down the back of the house it's one of the big challenges about designing a building that sits into a Hillside and so you need to get light into the back of the building so we have these wonderful big roof lights this beautiful big wall which has got this scrubbed lime plaster partly because if you try and plaster a wall this big in one go you always get undulations and variation but if you put a texture into that wall that your eye looks at the texture rather than the mistakes it's sort of just accepting the realities of building and this brings you straight into the kitchen and Kate actually hello this is Kate so you live here don't you I do I do live here I do live here and it's a very very lovely place to live it's very has a very calm kind of feeling to it we wanted to have an open plan kitchen with the kitchen table being the starting point I mean the heart of the house isn't it it is we eat around it we work around it the kids paint on it you know all sorts of things this is the cupboard of junk and then this is The Wimbledon television it only gets turned on for Wimbledon pretty much the storage wall acts as a really good divider between the kitchen and the sitting room this can kind of create a little bit of separation we got two kids who are you know want to read and sit on their phones like everyone but they can come around here and sort of hide you know just it just helps everyone have a bit of privacy one of my favorite things actually about these windows which come right to the floor is that because of the position of our flower beds it almost feels like the flower beds are coming into the room as well especially at this time of year when they're just really growing you know I hate this phrase bringing the outside in it feels so overly done but to bring the outside in was was the courtyard and we could have you know just literally pulled the house together and got rid of it but it brings so much to the building isn't it the house is sort of divided into I suppose two harms really if you think about it this is kind of like the public section of it this is you know where people come see us and where we are most the time we have a snug which is where we sort of go and sit in front of the TV and it's a bit more low-key and then it runs into the bedrooms so this is more like the private part of the house and it critically changes light quality and you go from the very bright Open Spaces of the main outward part of the house into something more muted and calm and quiet and we deliberately painted it a dark color so that it really emphasized that but then you get to the end of the Darkly painted Corridor and then into a really bright open room which is the master bedroom with the the dual aspect windows that just really take in Garden Beyond it which is amazing you really feel like you're wrapped in the garden and the lovely thing is you can just come out your bedroom straight into this this kind of incredible landscape just there is our is our office in that in that black building there we've spent the last five years sort of really rewilding this landscape planting sort of seven eight hundred trees and bushes we've learned a lot about sewing a wildflower Meadow which um isn't quite as straightforward as we thought but the effort and the work has really been worth it actually every year something different comes up that's something really satisfying about that and also just creating a home for so much biodiversity and then there's the roof which is worth having a look at foreign [Music] you know I wanted to be an architect since I was about 13 or 14 and I think part of that was always about building my own house because it all started off making dens and tree houses so to do it for myself and my family has been an extraordinary experience having somewhere where the children can grow up come home to you know have that haven I think for all of us I mean that's what everybody wants isn't it we've been able to create somewhere really special to us this is a living home you know there's friends staying there's kids coming in they're dog running around it is not some beautiful object that you don't you know you give it a good kicking and it's and it lasts and I think that's really important this house is designed to take a messy noisy normal family and it seems to do that well I think that's a real success the modern house selling thoughtfully designed homes across the UK [Music]

Channel: The Modern House

Views: 242,780

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Id: 0imioqWp9uQ

Length: 6min 31sec (391 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023