This apartment scheme was designed by Annabelle & Co. to appear as a single large home. The site really suited apartments due to it’s slope, north facing rear elevation and position adjacent to Prestbury Golf Course, hence it’s name. The proposal will be highly energy efficient incorporating high levels of insulation and modern technologies. The design has been integrated into the landscape and into the existing topography to appear as three storeys. Every effort has been made to submerge under-croft car parking and conceal surface parking to enhance the result.
For this project our design response was as follows;
- Six 1500sqft apartments with external terraces & balconies or private gardens
The roof has been an important consideration where there is an opportunity to influence the form through a series of elements that break the eaves line, the overall mass and strong building lines. This has been achieved through assessing the building form as a whole, considering how the building turns corners and to not present the building as a singular block, but as a series of forms of considered scales. The proposal presents two contemporary projecting gables and retained their relationship of the existing gables where the left hand gable is more dominant in scale and mass than the right. The dormer window breaks the eaves line, it has fine dormer cheeks and has an overall elegance set within large areas of wall and stone roof. This detail has had a great influence on breaking up the strong building lines of the proposal with the same elegant frame that had been found during our analysis and has provided a strong relationship between the roof and the windows.
A combination of contemporary clipped eaves and a wide verge detail demonstrates refined and high quality architectural detailing. It allows the elevation to not be compromised by overhanging
eaves, but as a side profile it remains a strong feature that defines the edge of the building. The slipped building form and fenestration has been designed to give relief and depth to the elevations which has been tested and developed through the process of creating hand-made models. The relationship between the setting and the proposal is considered critical and this modelling has helped to test this, illustrating where design changes were required.
Long and short views are captured all around the site, however the sun-path has defined the locations of the internal spaces. The bedroom spaces are located on the rear and side elevations, allowing in the morning and evening sun. This has allowed the living accommodation and terraces to be located on the front, south-west elevation to provide an active frontage and to allow
the main spaces to have long views down the site and to gain afternoon and evening sun.
// “An appealing architectural folly that sits beautifully in the landscape. Its complexity is hidden in the execution, which we hope to encourage by giving this accolade. Achieving the wanted texture, sloping of the walls, as well as the sharpness of the edges is quite a feat in construction—an extremely promising project.” // Kees Kaan
Annabelle imbues their latest work with the ‘crackle of life’; an abstract sensory experience experienced in atmospheric spaces.
“Crackle of life is just one way of describing the profound feeling of energy we experience in atmospheric spaces. Natural environments capture it easily; a woodland clearing with sunlight blistering through the trees canopy of leaves is a simple example of one.
Designed from the heart, the brief for the commission was for it to create connection to life in all its natural forms. Whilst it is to be a Sculptors workspace it has also become a sculpture in its own right as the landscape it is set to be in is so special also.
The Iron is to harness all natural aspects of the site. Physically it is forged entirely from Earth elements building itself up from the ground in the purest local form of material resulting in beautiful rammed earth slab work. Its walls terminate at a parapet opening to the sky to share the day and night’s sky and stars and all of weather’s many natural occurrences including day light patterns to the space within.
Allowing the folly to be open means that the experience inside the building is very specific to the time, season and year. Rain, sunlight, snow and wind dance through the open space, working with the sculptor to create their works of art. The architecture frames the sculptor’s experience of the place and creates exciting and inspiring opportunities to interact with natural forces and balances our smallness against the worlds vastness, with the purpose being to anchor the individual to their practice of sculpting.
Hugely inspiring examples of built architectural works such as Bruder Laus Chapel by Peter Zumthor have been the inspiration for this project.
This lovely village plot called for a design which is neither rural nor urban. Small trees to the opposite side of the street reveal bound a publicly used open space and two really well maintained apartment developments to either side. The very short walk to the village centre where there are numerous pubs, cafes and restaurants, not to mention the very local landmark, the Admiral Rodney, means that this is a vibrant village.
The design proposed is one which;
- Delicately responds to the various elements which make up the character of the context, such as the mix of materials that we find either side of this plot (red brick and render).
- Maximises the amount of soft landscaping and hard landscaping
- Reduces the prominence of the built forms
At ground a pink brick and sandstone boundary wall to complete the existing neighbouring boundary wall, above which is a large area of soft landscaping. The form is terraced up the site reducing in scale as it steps back from the street. Set back from this brick wall eight metres is a single storey elevation in white painted brick, and again set back another single storey elevation in white painted brick above it. Finally the roof is clad in brown zinc which is further set back from any of the previous front elevations and the windows and door openings have all been carefully designed to create a balanced composition.
Externally we took a good deal of inspiration from Butley Hall – a townhouse, across three storeys with a flat roof parapet and strict orthogonal arrangement of windows. This is a pair of handsomely proportioned white painted brick townhouses will add character to a currently derelict gap site in Prestbury.
The sensitive addition of three new build homes around a new courtyard which has been landscaped to compliment a beautiful existing dairy barn and the stunning wider rural setting.
Double height spaces, concrete floors and exposed timber structure add to the experience of space and materiality internally.
Visuals by Pillar Visuals