We’ve recently gained planning consent for a contemporary house near Farnham, in the Planning district of Waverley Council.

The new house replaces a post-war chalet style dwelling with a bold contemporary structure, designed to meet the client’s brief of a highly sustainable modern home, optimising the site and its views. We required careful negotiation with the planning department, as well as neighbours; and several applications to gain consent. The key criteria for consent was that the new house was not ‘materially larger than the replacement dwelling’.

The house is conceived as a timber clad first floor volume visually ‘floating’ over a predominantly glazed ground floor rear. A double height living space projects to the rear and bisects this volume, framing the views of the site and the distant countryside. A kitchen, dining room, playroom and study provide the primary accommodation to the rear, serviced by store, plant room, utility, WC and cinema room to the North/front of the house. The front elevation is a more solid masonry structure at ground level and timber above.

Five bedrooms are provided at first floor level, including a master suite on the East end of the building, complete with its own terrace.  An attached annex contains 2 bedrooms and living space. Ancillary buildings to manage the woodland and a replacement swimming pool are also proposed for the site.

The house will be designed to be energy efficient, meeting high levels of air tightness, thermal insulation and optimising renewable energy where possible.

We are currently working up Stage 3-4 of the RIBA work stages with a view to tendering and start on site later in the year.

UPDATE: You can find out more about how this project has been progressing here. You can also contact our team here if you’d like to find out more about new build housing design.