Edinburgh-based Falconer + Jones shared with us their project Lugton Brae House, co-designed with Andrew Brown. It’s a small family home, to be constructed in the garden to the rear of the existing house (owned by the clients).
You can see more images and architect’s description after the break.
The client approached us and asked to investigate the possibility of building a new smaller home for themselves in the large back garden to the rear of their existing home. They currently reside in a large family home with many bedrooms however now that the children have all grown up and moved out they are wanting to downsize to a much smaller and easier to maintain property.
This is a proposal for a linear plan single storey dwelling consisting of two bedrooms, study, kitchen/dining and living area.
The overall footprint of the building shall be relatively small in comparison to much of the buildings in the locality.
A strong sense of open space shall be achieved within the building through use of an open plan arrangement for the kitchen/dining and living areas, and also through strong connections with the dwellings landscaped garden which is accessible at various points throughout the building.
The new dwellings low height and seamless integration with existing site walls serve to reduce its visual impact as much as possible – both from street level and also from within the existing building and land.
Although the new building is single aspect (facing entirely South East) the design makes use of roof lights along the length of the northern wall in order to bring light right into the full depth of the buildings plan.
The existing architecture of the surrounding areas is extremely varied, one aspect we noted however was the examples of smaller buildings appearing as satellite or secondary to larger dwellings (e.g. Home and stable-block arrangement). It is our aim to echo this typology – creating a new smaller dwelling that shall relate directly, through use of common materials, to the existing larger house..
The method of construction proposed is that of timber frame, allowing for a relatively short construction period to minimise the potential disturbance to neighbours. Aside from the timber frame the materials proposed are intended to relate to the existing built environment as closely as possible. Site walls shall be constructed using re-claimed sandstone matching (as closely as possible) the stone used in the existing site walls and local architecture. The shallow mono-pitch roof shall be finished in the re-claimed slate tiles, again matching (as closely as possible) the existing building and the local architecture. Exposed timber frame and large areas of glazing shall be the finish of the dwelling on the elevation immediately addressing the new garden.
Ultimately the objective with this proposal is to create a small dwelling that – although remaining extremely discreet from both the street and existing House – creates a uniquely open and bright building that provides a highly pleasant and private home for its occupants.
