Crafted from a rich palette of natural and vernacular materials, the Coach House proposes a new vision for contemporary domestic architecture, based on tactility, light and emotion. Designed by John Smart Architects and built by our in-house firm of contractors, the house is atmospheric and spatially complex; yet at the same time reassuring, homely, comfortable and familiar. The original Coach House, built in 1860, was an outbuilding to the adjacent and grander no.11. The original building has been largely rebuilt; retaining key aspects of its form and character while constructing a compelling new spatial arrangement in the interior. Each floor and room is designed to a specific material and architectural narrative, based on their relationship to light, space and the rituals of everyday life. Rooflights pull sunlight down through the house, past the pitched rafters of the 'great hall' into the interlocking spaces of the garden floor, which houses a guest suite around a sunken courtyard and a large kitchen opening into the garden.
Between them, a reflective, concrete ramp 'captures' the sunlight from above and creates a thread of light linking the rear garden with the sky above. A palette of poured concrete, grey Petersen brick and antique brass on the lower ground floor establish a connection to the earth, and creates a sense of solidity and peace, away from the bustle of the world. Moving up through the building the architectural transitions reveal themselves. On the ground floor, iroko and natural plaster lined bedrooms look over the front and back gardens. Intricately crafted timber ceilings, bespoke wardrobes and hardwood floors create individual spaces of privacy and comfort.
An angled iroko stair scales a facetted polished plaster volume to the first floor library, off which open and light-filled rooms reveal spectacular views outside, creating permeability and social connections between different spaces of encounter and relaxation. The glossily reflective polished plaster living room, and the study with its intricately patterned white larch lining, open up into the hallway through a series of hardwood shutters to provide views across, and into the great hall at the heart of the house.
Throughout the house, the design seeks to foster the 'in-between' spaces in which domestic life is lived. The reading nook, the bench for putting on shoes, the inglenook, the shelf for curios, the fireplace: these moments are woven and blended into a contemporary architecture looks beyond the alienating blankness of typical late modernism. Like most John Smart Architects projects, the Coach House was built by our own in-house firm of contractors, allowing an unrivalled level of control over detail, quality and design, and creating opportunities to continually test and refine elements of the design at all stages of the project. In the course of the project, the Coach House has been a 'laboratory' for this form of practice, with ideas and techniques being refined and developed for future homes.
