Extras Perfect Pads: Oxfordshire

Date Published:

20/06/2008

I love this building for its modesty: its modest scale, the modesty with which it sits down into the hill and its modest use of materials. I love the way McLaughlin has theatrically played with the vista, controlling your view of the Oxford plains as you move towards and then through the buildings: first by cutting a tunnel through the building; then by building an infinity pool that reaches out to it; then by walling the double-height living room entirely in glass to provide great gulps of view.

Credit: David Grey

But above all, I love the outside of the house and the use of the materials that echo the setting. The Douglas fir cladding is the colour of winter beech leaves; even the colours of the stainless and galvanised steel fixtures appear on the bark of the surrounding trees. And the glass literally mirrors its environment, responding differently to its setting as the hours pass and the weather changes, sacrificing the ego of the building to the surrounding forest and the sky.

This is a house that manages to be that chimerical thing: the careful blending of many good architectural ingredients: beauty, comfort, modernity, person and place; that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is also a house designed in a vocabulary so responsive to its environment, south Oxfordshire should look to it as an example of what fits there. If ever there was a building to herald a new rural vernacular, this is it.

Who lives here? David and Shelley Grey What do you do for a living? 'I'm a film-maker and Shelley is a lawyer.' Where is your house? 'In the Chilterns, south Oxfordshire.'

How did you find the site? 'Someone on Shelley's daily train to London was looking for a house for their aged parents, but the estate agent sent them the details of a derelict house in 9½ acres of woodland. It was useless for them, but ideal for us.'

Were you a modern design enthusiast before you decided to commission the house? 'No, we actually owned a Georgian rectory. But since we completed the house I have become something of a warrior for modern architecture.'

What do you most like about the house? 'Everything, especially the transparency, lightness and “oneness” with the surroundings.'