August 2 2023

Brown & Brown Architects have secured a coveted planning consent for the erection of a replacement home at Grasmere in the heart of the Lake District.

Wren's Nest follows the axis of a traditional stone wall, occupying grounds designed by landscape architect Thomas Hayton Mawson on land which originally served as a terrace bookended by two summerhouses.

Replacing one largely unoriginal summerhouse while retaining its important garden the design minimises its footprint through incorporation of a load-bearing retaining wall, ensuring foundations are limited to just two other points of contact with the ground.

In a statement the architects wrote: "The form of the new house is designed to sit within the existing landscape, with the load being transmitted down along a new / thickening of the retaining wall in the area of the house, and sculptural columns at the outer edge, minimising the need for work in the area of trees wherever possible, and resulting in no tree loss on the site. ‍

"The proposed house is of a contemporary design, and adopts a largely linear form, sitting above, and influenced by, the topography of the site, to mirror the horizontality of the existing retaining wall, and retain the garden itself as the visually dominant element of the site. ‍

"The massing creates a clear visual hierarchy on the site, emphasising the visually ‘heavy’ nature of the lower floor (clad in local stone), with the ‘lighter’ overhanging timber-clad first floor sitting above, conceived as a ‘floating’ element sitting against the backdrop of the existing forest."

Benefitting from expansive views to the south and west with a ground floor utilising locally sourced stone contrasting with rain-screen timber cladding above under a sedum 'green' roof. 

Visuals provided by Touch3D

3 Comments

#1 Posted by Meh on 4 Aug 2023 at 19:13 PM

Sensitive and subtle modern insertion. Nice work.

#2 Posted by Marianna Galea Xuereb on 7 Aug 2023 at 17:41 PM

Reasonably visually appealing. But what about thermal insulation when the weather gets cold? Moreover, can this structure withstand gale force winds and general extreme weather?

#3 Posted by Pedant Tic on 8 Aug 2023 at 14:05 PM

@#3
Don't want to be too preesumptious, but for a practice based in the Cairngorm National Park, I'd hazard a guess they may have already considered u values, wind uplift and general extreme weather of the Lake District?

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