Once we’d decided to buy Dianthus, the next step was to engage an architect to work with us. A very good friend of ours Sarah Li who’s family have deep experience building in the local area introduced us to Rob Jackson of 527 Architects. That was a match made in heaven as we’ve really enjoyed working with Rob, he’s very familiar with the local area and went to the same school as Katie and Sarah. Test Valley School down the road in Stockbridge.

Before we wrote our brief, we had the benefit of speaking to close friends and seeing what they’d designed and built and the lessons learnt from it.

Sally and Eric Magnuson, had recently designed and were building their new house in Formentera, their use of local stone for cladding and the niches in the wall is amazing. We love hanging out with them in Formmie.  It has the most amazing views toward Valencia’s Denia Mountain across the Balearic sea. Also a reason not to go to the carribean given the beautiful pearl sea.

Floor and Keith Hurley had recently built a HaufHaus which gave us a lot of ideas given the footprint and some of our use cases were very similar. Our stay with Keith and Floor’s place truly inspired us a lot. Keri and Stuart Barker had also been through a house build experience. They’d worked with the Design and Material folks who have a good reputation in the UK. Their input was highly valuable.

The starting point for us was to sit down and write our brief. We’d seen a lot of inspiration on Pinterest, read several magazines such as Home Building and Renovating as well as Self Build. We felt we had enough at this stage to sit down with a blank piece of paper and write our brief. What was amazing was how aligned we both were with the brief.

WHAT WAS OUR ULTIMATE DESIRE FOR DIANTHUS?

A sustainable house that is mostly off-grid that focusses on the back of the house and blends that with the kitchen space which is geared for family and entertainment of guests.
What are the Things we want for the House?
Energy positive
Telsa Roof
Tesla Power wall for Energy Storage
Basement cinema / entertainment room
Big statement glass round the back to blend with back of house
Focus on back not on front
Disability access for our son
Downstairs disability wet room and bed room
Kitchen total focus of downstairs
Atrium or Mezzanine view from upstairs
Rear access
Use track round the side to paddock and replacement field shelter
Locally sourced sustainable material
In keeping with local Hampshire village feel
Options include converted church build or barn with brick and flint optional
Field shelter with water and electricity for storage can be multiple purpose lockable
Liveable loft
4 bathrooms
5-6 bedrooms
Smart home
Island in the kitchen
Not over fitted so it’s difficult to maintain
Pantry
Boot room/laundry room
Skylight
Double sink
Nice to have wine cellar
Bookshelves downstairs
Walk in wardrobe in the master bedroom
Built in wardrobe in rooms
Airing cupboard
House built for quiet not creaky floors and hearing through rooms
Somewhere to do wash down
Store bikes
Master bedroom opens up to a balcony.

What Happened After the Brief?

I haven’t quite finished the architecture section as there is so much to it than what I’ve covered so far. I’ll address them as we go along in multiple posts.

Besides, what we provided to Rob above, we setup some pins of what we like on Houzz, and Pinterest. Here is a link to one of our moodboards on Houzz.

This was shared with Rob and it was with the above brief and moodboard, he gave us a very good sketch from the very first session after our brief. What’s incredible is we’ve only tweaked this slightly ever since then. Mostly to reduce the cost as we were honestly shooting for the stars by asking for a rounded house of sorts. The reality is that any variation to a standard box house is expensive to build and expensive to find rounded fixtures e.g. curved glass which we wanted to put round the back of the house. We also wanted to have an overhanging bathtub which was in a semi circular space. We’ve had to moderate a lot of our crazy aspirations and channel all of that into other modest areas.

From our perspective, getting anywhere near what we’ve spec’ed above was more than we could ever have bargained for.

Making Our Vision Come Alive

The feature image on this page was a render Rob gave us framed last Christmas 2018 once our planning permission was granted. The render was inspired. The room at the top is the master bedroom. Katie and I had stayed at a beautiful boutique hotel called SolyLuna in Urubamba. We stayed at the hotel at the end of our Lares Trail or the Weaver trail as they call the alternative hike through the Andes towards Machu Pichu.

The reason why we especially love this hotel was the chalet we stayed in was incredibly earthy, cosy and beautiful. The rich ochre colours and flowers were amazing. The online photos don’t do the hotel any justice.

After four days hiking and camping, it was like arriving in paradise. The render above showing a tapestry and the loft bedroom is spot on. We’re still working on the final finish now. More importantly, we’re very grateful that Rob has been able to bring to life what we thought we’d mentioned in passing.

Other themes in the render above include the Cantilevered Barn structure over a sedum wildflower roofed bungalow, the statement glass at the rear as well as the bookshelf and gabled end view of the master bedroom balcony.

If you see some of the other renders in the Starting the Pre-Application Process post, you will notice the street facing gabled end looks like a church. We love Hampshire flint chapels and churches and felt there wasn’t anything on the main drag in Houghton that gave you the chapel or church feel was the reason we’ve gone for stained glass windows on the gabled end of the house facing the road. That’s also going to have a combination of Hampshire flint and British Oak cladding. We certainly want the house to fit into the village and not impose itself. I’m going to do a post later on a photo gallery of inspiring Flint houses we’ve found travelling around Hampshire.

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