Conran & Partners are great clients. I’m not just saying that to make them feel good and to make sure they keep commissioning me. They really are – so long as they keep handing my jobs like this private residence in Sussex, I’m happy.
I shot this in two visits, spread over three months due to the adverse weather conditions (in between, I did this other private house in Sussex for them as well). The shots we got in March worked well but I thought I could get a lot more out of it if we returned when the weather was a bit better, the landscaping had settled in and the leaves had started to come out on the trees. My able assistant (Brooke) and I got absolutely drenched on the night-time shots first time around as well! I spent as much time setting up the shot as I did trying to keep rain from the front element of my wide angle lens (I almost ruined a pair of desert boots and sta-prest trousers in the mud as well!).
The house is stunning, inside and out, and the images were recently featured in the Sunday Times property section as it’s the first Conran house to go on the market. I’ll nab some text from Conran & Partner’s own press release to describe the property…
“Conran & Partners has designed a highly environmentally responsible, contemporary, family home in the grounds of a former school in Sussex. The house expresses the strong horizontals found in the walls and hedges of the existing garden whilst built from a palette of high quality, traditional materials. Nestled into the existing trees to the north of the site, the house optimises its orientation with glazed south facing elevations, shaded by large overhangs. The copper clad first floor takes a linear form, spanning across the lower level from east to west and acts as an acoustic separation between the garden and the noise generated by the nearby road. Waste from the dig for the site was mounded along the boundary of the road to further improve the noise levels in the garden.
The walls are built with the Beco-block insulated wall system, finished with lime render giving high u-values and high thermal mass. Underfloor heating is powered by a heat pump connected to a 1000m ground loop laid in the field behind the house. Internally the house is arranged around a double height, grand central entrance hall with a family wing to the east comprising kitchen, dining, utility rooms, and childrens bedrooms, while the west side of the house has the quieter, more formal spaces of, lounge, library and study room with the master bedroom and guest bedroom above.”
I was lucky enough to visit the site when it was still under construction and it was amazing to see the Beco-block walls going up. Essentially, they are polystyrene blocks that are stacked like lego and then have reinforced concrete poured in them. Not something I’d seen before. Chatting with the owner of the house, it seems to have worked very well – the house is warm in winter and remains cool in the summer.
Anyways, let’s have some pics…
I thought it might be quite interesting to see some of the architect’s drawings as well (these drawings remain the copyright of Conran & Partners and should not be used without permission).
Check out Conran & Partners’ site for more of their work.
This is the photography blog of clickclickjim, Jim Stephenson Architectural Photographer. As always, plenty o’ pics on my website.
