“Combining lifetime home with complex planning. ”
Residential development of business land is something we have experience of, and we are currently working with clients who came to us with outline planning.
Project Background
Our clients wanted to build two oak framed houses on business land that they already owned. The original site had been a nursery with glasshouses on that our client used to run. The family wanted to build one house for their mum, who is in her later years, and one son, and a different dwelling for the other son and his wife.
From the start we worked on this project as two separate sets of clients, two separate briefs and two separate dwellings. Although both schemes were the same in terms of massing and footprint, each were tailored to the client’s individual tastes and requirements. The first in a contemporary cottage style, the second more traditional.
House One
The mum and son wanted a split dwelling with the downstairs focussing on ease of access, with an open plan kitchen, diner and sitting area, looking out onto landscaped gardens. and the upstairs devoted to the Son who wanted as much open plan living as possible. The design is more contemporary in its style, incorporating aluminium clad windows and an open gable balcony.
House two
The son and wife wanted a more traditional home which incorporated features such as traditional casement windows, traditional room layouts and a more elaborate oak frame.
Progress
Architect Luke Jackson, said of the project “This project was particularly interesting and challenging from a design perspective because there were quite a few design constraints from the start of the project. The site had already received outline consent for two dwellings and a barn, which specified the buildings size, massing, footprint and location on the site. The outline consent was quite a considerable planning battle and took a long time to obtain, it was therefore important not to deviate too much from the outline consent.
There were three main challenges;
- To design the exterior form in a way which was aesthetically pleasing but within the parameters of the outline consent.
- To design two dwellings which shared the same overall form, but were significantly different in terms of room layout and style, one a contemporary cottage the other more traditional. Externally this was achieved through changing just a few details such as the type of window, their size and position, and also the addition of a first floor covered roof terrace on one of the properties.
- The oak frame required careful consideration, because the outline consent for a one and a half storey dwelling had not been designed with an oak frame in mind, and so it was important to make sure that the frame didn’t interrupt areas of circulation and ensure there was adequate head height.”