Oak joinery, white-painted bricks, and concrete flooring were used to make the interior of this new home in Suffolk, England, more modern than its conventional pitched-roof exterior .
West Stow Lodge was made by London architects Task Orange for a family with 3 young young children in a village close to Bury St Edmunds. It replaces a 1970s property on the website, which the loved ones lived in for a 12 months, but usually planned to lengthen or change.
“They had been clear that they desired this to be their ‘forever’ property, and they wanted it to be as huge as achievable inside the accessible budget,” architect Christopher Ash advised Dezeen. “The existing house was unremarkable, and not worth retaining.”
The 450-square-metre residence is much more than twice the size of the preceding property. It has a pitched roof and an exterior of white render and red bricks to mirror the neighborhood architectural style, but attributes subtle details to distinguish it as contemporary.
“Whilst the original impression is of pitched roofs and chimneys, a review of the particulars portrays something much more contemporary – a compositional play with recess and projection, shadow and light, and horizontal and vertical emphasis,” mentioned Ash.
“We needed to check out a traditional kind, although creating a home that was quietly of its time.”
The three-storey residence has a formal sitting space, review and music area on the ground floor, as well as a a lot more informal open-plan kitchen, dining room, residing area at the back.
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The 1st floor has five bedrooms, every single with their very own bathroom or shower area, and the 2nd floor, which is tucked beneath the roof pitch, has an open-prepare play area.
During the property, the architects chose a restrained palette of resources, such as white-painted bricks, polished concrete flooring, and oak for all the joinery, which matches the window frames.
Interior particulars had been stored minimal to boost the contemporary quality of the residence. Shadow gaps have been used rather of skirting boards, door frames sit flush inside of the walls, and surface treatments such as tiles or wall coverings had been avoided.
“The interior components echo the exterior, and are intended really significantly as an sincere expression of the construction,” said Ash.
“The oak of the windows carries through to the joinery, the brickwork of the chimneys is left exposed and painted white, and the external kind is expressed with the double-height corridor and vaulted ceilings of the bedrooms.”
Wood and brick are usually utilised – either in their raw state or painted – to bridge outdated and new designs of architecture. Other buildings that get this strategy incorporate a barn-inspired extension in Australia with a plywood interior, a renovated 1960s brick property in Buckinghamshire that has been painted black, and a Victorian boathouse in Berkshire with a modern oak kitchen beneath its original timber beams.
To emphasise the sense of visual continuity throughout West Stow Lodge, Venture Orange spaced the mullions of all the windows evenly, at 600-millimetre intervals.
“As a counterpoint to the more romantic top quality of the home’s kind, we applied a rigorous buy to the composition of the window frames,” said Ash.
“This 600-millimetre spacing is employed for all windows, screens and external cladding elements, and it is this rhythm that brings order to the style, and prevents any descent into whimsy.”
A row of glass doors along the corridor up coming to the stairs opens up to a courtyard at the rear, providing a direct route from the front door to the backyard.
“The intention was to let for organic ventilation, and also let visitors to arrive at the front door and movement straight through to the backyard,” stated Ash.
The house was finished in 15 months, and built with a steel frame, load-bearing masonry walls and external insulating render.
The landscaping of the web site, which is adjacent to a medieval church, and attributes a stream and several willow trees, was designed in collaboration with Janey Auchincloss Patterns.
“Inside of this setting, the residence can be seen as a nuanced, contemporary exploration of the domestic vernacular architecture in Suffolk,” stated Ash.
“This is a improvement of the strategy that the directors of Venture Orange initial explored in their personal property, Orange Cottage, which is in the largely Tudor village of Lavenham, Suffolk,” he additional.
Photography is by Jack Hobhouse.
Ground floor prepare 
First floor prepare
