Fayland House
Fayland House
We were engineers for this new private house, located on a large plot in the Chiltern Hills between the villages of Skirmett and Hambleden. The site was previously occupied by a two-storey house with a number of outbuildings including two garages, a summer house, large stables, a gym, a greenhouse and an outdoor swimming pool.
Working in collaboration with David Chipperfield Architects, the development presented an opportunity to restore a typical landscape by removing all conflicting features that had been superimposed onto it. The scheme involved the demolition of an existing farmhouse and its surrounding outhouses, to be replaced with a single, 888m2 residence. The new house now nestles into rolling chalk hills on the side of the valley with far-reaching views across an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The simple single-storey layout of the building belies some complex structural issues that have been explored in the scheme. The design a strong emphasis on expressing the structure and this resulted in large panels of unjointed masonry, exposed internally and externally, and exposed in-situ concrete soffits throughout the building. This presented challenges with accommodating movement at the interfaces between these materials which led to complex engineering solutions.
Awards:
Upon completion, the project won The Architectural Review’s 2015 ‘AR House’ Award, which “celebrate excellence in one-off house design.” The house was described by the jury as a radical new take on the English country house with “a dramatic use of surface and volume blending a timeless classicism.”
WATCH: “Fayland House in Buckinghamshire quietly subverts the country house typology, blending timeless classicism with a dramatic use of surface and volume.”
Client: Private
Architect: David Chipperfield Architects