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Architects: Loader Monteith
- Area: 155 m²
- Year: 2021
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Photographs:Dapple Photography
Text description provided by the architects. Loader Monteith has unveiled a new home in the Scottish countryside for an active family characterized by a striking extruded aluminum window frame and black-stained larch cladding.
The new 155 square-meter home occupies part of a retired and subdivided dairy farm in South Lanarkshire. The clients initially moved into a static caravan on site to first establish their horse livery business and subsequently achieved planning for a vast 360 square meter new build home. In 2018, the clients were referred to Loader Monteith and briefed the architects to rethink the previously approved plans to craft a practical, social family base for the day-to-day runnings of the flourishing horse stables.
Loader Monteith first reduced the home's footprint, designing a highly usable compact floor plan set over two stories featuring the required four bedrooms, snug, open plan kitchen and living, and covered outdoor area. The new layout was designed to maximize views over the 25-acre farm, with large windows along the East elevations offering uninterrupted vistas across the South Lanarkshire valley beyond.
The open-plan kitchen, living room, and dining space feel part of the landscape through a large triple-glazed window seat, set slightly out of the floor plan and defined by a red aluminum frame. This architectural detail features sloping chamfered edges to allow more natural light in, and create longer skywards views. Loader Monteith wrapped this frame around the southeastern corner, creating a satisfying, cubic facade that neatly lines with the covered outdoor terrace on the second floor.
Bedrooms, a family bathroom, and an undercover patio occupy the second story. Oriented East to make the most of the morning sun, the patio was conceived as a quiet place to survey the landscape, protected by a frameless glass balustrade. Angling views towards the East also offers the clients and their surrounding neighbors a high level of privacy; six residential dwellings in close proximity occupy the subdivided farm, so the architects designed large apertures overlooking the client's own land, with smaller windows in circulation spaces to draw more natural light in, but not provide views out.
Loader Monteith introduced energy-efficient systems to the project in line with the studio's rigorous approach to sustainability. The Equine House benefits from an Air Source Heat Pump, highly insulated shell, triple glazing, and underfloor heating. Sustainably farmed black larch cladding and white render protect the exterior, topped by a recycled aluminum roof.
