Steve and I had some pretty clear ideas about what we wanted from our house when we first met our architect, Peter Smith, in May 2019. And whilst all Roderick James’ designed houses appealed to us in one way or another (you can see a range of them on their website here), for our own fairly ‘modest’ project we liked the simplicity of their Baarn concept. But not for nothing had I spent 30+ years putting together Powerpoint decks for a living… I can’t remember exactly when our 18 page Powerpoint briefing document landed on Peter’s desk (complete with pages of ‘inspiration’ pictures for every area inside and outside the house, plus some ‘interesting things’ that we just quite liked) – probably not long after we first met – he seemed to take it in good spirit!
Interesting to read through the items on our wish list two years on, with absolute priorities:
- light
- views
- good size rooms
- no pokey spaces/unnecessary corridors or hallways
- Passivhaus/eco-build” (not sure I knew what a Passivhaus really was at that point!).
Construction and ongoing: “as low environment impact as possible – both build and ongoing running” – again, at that point we hadn’t heard of the phrases ’embodied and operational carbon’. Plus a whole list of other internal and external features, including ‘small things that make you smile’. (This latter one was prompted by a visit to one of Roderick’s houses in Drimnin, where some binoculars were suspended from a pulley system just above the large window.)
With the exception of the inclusion of a wood burning stove which we learnt just wasn’t necessary (see discussion about this in the Passivhaus post), every other thing on this wish list has been accommodated in the design (or will be with the furnishings). Given that this is pretty much the first time I have reviewed this list in more than a year, total credit goes to Peter for his attention to considering every detail in our ‘simple little house’ and delivering it (alongside becoming qualified as a Passivhaus Designer and developing a Net Zero house for COP26) – simple things are usually anything but simple to design! Architects also usually get rapped for their total lack of attention to costs, and again – whilst our house of course will cost more to build than when we started out (with our slightly unrealistic plan, and also not having a crystal ball regarding COVID) – Peter made us aware of all the implications of our choices at every stage.
