What was the initial brief?

The client approached us to gain planning permission, after previous planning complications, as well as design a home in open countryside that would allow the family to support their son’s disabilities, and provide him with the opportunity for independent living.

How we did it

After working alongside the client to understand the needs of the family and their son, as well as considering whether to extend the existing family bungalow or build a new home, we focused on Paragraph 55 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NFFP).

The outcome was to create a new home.

Paragraph 55 seeks to control new housing in the ‘open countryside’, and we were able to use this to follow its four key criteria:

Be truly outstanding or innovative, helping to raise standards of design more generally in rural areas;
Reflect the highest standards in architecture;
Significantly enhance its immediate setting; and
Be sensitive to the defining characteristics of the local area

After taking this into consideration, alongside studies into the character of the local area and its history, we developed a site-specific design solution.

Working intensively with our client to evolve the design, we arranged to new home on a single level with sloping floors to define the variation between each internal space.

This allowed us to design a ‘stealth’ long and flat house within the landscape, as well as provide a building that the client could be proud of.