Architect Barbara Weiss Invites Us To Her Inside-Out House, A Transformed Cottage In Wiltshire

[Music] our london house is known as the upside down house and this house is the inside out house houses in this country usually have a very bad relationship between the inside and the outside many cottages have tiny windows very thick walls and i come from a country where you do live very much inside and outside at the same time and everything is flung open i wanted to have a place that brought that love of the outside into the heart of the house my name is barbara weiss i'm an architect and i run my own architectural practice in london the house was originally bought to allow us to escape london much as we're urban people at heart we really like the idea of having a place away from the city originally we bought these two 1904 workers cottages that had been combined by a previous tenant and after many years of trying to figure out how we could extend the original house we managed two years ago to complete the construction of quite a sizable new extension the big problem is that i didn't want the new extension to be overbearing it was a question of how to conceal the extension while also getting better lights bigger rooms and generally have a house that was much more functional than it was before i was very keen to continue in the tradition of local vernacular architecture one of the most important features of the old house is the roof so i made sure that the new building had almost exactly the same roof pitch and the way i saw the new wing i wanted it to feel a bit like a garden wall i thought if the materials used were brick and flint and i grew things up it it would then be a bit of a backdrop and it wouldn't be crying out for attention owning a place outside of london just opened up a completely different world it's a place where you leave all the urban worries behind and you feel as if you can breathe again and enjoy the good things in life it was a discovery for me how much i really need and crave the natural life i've been enjoying it more and more as years go by it's been an exercise in mindfulness getting to know this part of the world [Music]

Channel: The Modern House

Views: 635,875

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Id: bEkqJ5Jycio

Length: 3min 1sec (181 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 20 2021