Dykehead Floating House

Project Overview

The project involved a new house in the open countryside, with the site looking north towards the Corbridge conservation area. The building subtly responds to the wonderful landscape setting by considering the site; a key aspect of the design was to lower the form to provide a closer relationship with the landscape – this informed the decision to make the building single storey, and crucially to use a flat roof solution and a linear form; the building sits nestled back into the hillside, with the overall design being read as a series of horizontal elements which tie in with the contours of the landscape. The use of two main volumes which ‘slide’ together further breaks and visually reduces the mass of the building, whilst providing different levels of privacy in the locations and adjacencies of the spaces, with the bedrooms sitting to the east and set back from the living spaces to the west where they enjoy light through the day and evening.

Due to the steeply sloping site, the design uses a lower element of stone to provide a solution to the access issues, housing the garage, entrance and plant room whilst also providing a conceptual connection to the landscape. This stone plinth was imagined as a crag of rock or embedded historic structure and took inspiration from the linear embedded Roman remains of local landmarks in nearby Corbridge roman Fort (from which the house can be seen) and Hadrian’s Wall, making a conceptual connection with the historic landmarks of the area; the main body of the house then floats lightly above.