Thornill Cottage
The new building is attached to pair of farm cottages and acts as a reorganising element for a house and garden.Issues of energy conservation and use of sustainable materials were addressed.The building provides a new entrance front, a living room and studio.
Timber clad elevations and large areas of glass face towards the garden achieving warming through passive solar gain.An aedicule like structure stands taller and provides stability to a surrounding timber framed carcass .
Reached by a few steps up it frames views of the garden and fields beyond.
This project involved the practice in working within a dual land scape of cultivated and wild nature.
This project received a 2005 award from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
Article by Kim Finer
A small approach road links the nearby village to the property and leads via a wooded canopy between fields to a clearing. Here, in a landscape of tightly rolling hills and often sharp inclines, a new smaller landscape of construction has been formed, that is set tightly within the surrounding garden levels. The way the building sits bedded in the contours of the site is made even more natural by the forms and materials used, and in a new way folds the buildings (old and new) into the landscape.
The new building can be seen from every possible angle and the design of the flat roof with a larch rain-screen is visible from the bedrooms of the existing house. The siting of the new wing reconciles the orientation of the approach road (parallel to the new wing) and with the older house.
