The red-orange patina of the steel transforms the extension and as the sun sets on the downs, the building glows. To control costs, they installed the steel in its uncorroded form: “First you get a shiny metal spaceship on the back of your house, then you wait for rain,” laughs Ed. Its arrival was not for the fainthearted, however. The rusted Corten façade created an easy visual link with the existing red brick, while also referencing the iron ore-rich deposits found in the surrounding meadows. And yet, like many of the couple’s choices, once considered, it quickly became the most fitting – indeed, the only – material to use. Without doubt, the most daring design decision was to clad the exterior in Corten steel. And the soil acts as a sponge, so rainwater percolation is slowed.
When you put seeding on a roof, it prolongs its life three times over because the sun can’t penetrate to the membrane. “A lot of people think it is rain that damages a flat roof,” explains the architect, “but actually it’s the sun that corrodes it. And to offer more protection, a grass roof was laid.
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“There is the most remarkable 180-degree view down the valley and up to the church which hasn’t really changed for centuries,” says Ed, “yet there was no way of viewing it from the ground floor before this extension.” The obvious solution would have been to install an expanse of glass doors across the back wall but instead Hollaway devised a series of picture windows, angling each aperture to frame a slightly different view, and thus triggering the building’s singular undulating façade.įrom this base, the design evolved somewhat organically: such large windows required protection from the sun, so Hollaway added a wide, jutting overhang, varying in depth on each side of the structure. Built to withstand the extremes of weather on Kent’s windswept North Downs, the house felt hunkered to the land, “and we wanted to build on that connection,” says Rebecca “we didn’t want the new design to feel like an imposition.”Īnd then there was the view. The couple were clear from the start that they wanted their home to meld seamlessly with the landscape. “We feel like we’re custodians of the house, so we had a sense of wanting to tread carefully so as not to disturb the past, while also projecting into the future,” explains Rebecca. Furthermore, the couple were keen to capture the characterful spirit of the centuries-old cottage that had won them over when they moved in eight years previously. Landing on a design that would honour the building’s heritage while delivering a modern family space would require imagination and trust. While the timber-framed cottage looked relatively simple from the outside, owing to a 17th-century fire, the internal layout had been reconfigured “erratically” a dark 1960s extension on the back of the property was equally disjointed. “Guy internalised our aesthetic and understood it. “You want to be honest about your own aesthetic at the beginning of the process but you also want to be as non-prescriptive as possible so that the architect can have a blank canvas for their talent to express itself,” says Ed.
So it required more than a little resolve from former England cricketer-turned-author Ed Smith and his wife, children’s author Rebecca, to reach out to award-winning architect Guy Hollaway to help them reimagine their rose-covered, Elizabethan farmhouse near the Kent coast with a startling, modern-looking steel kitchen and dining extension.Īt their initial meeting, Hollaway sketched as the couple talked and quickly clients and architect realised they were speaking the same language. The terms are not renowned for the ease with which they come together, be it at the design, planning, or build stage. Drop the words “listed building” and “extension” into the same sentence and people tend to shift nervously in their seats.
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