The Red House

By David Kohn Architects

Client Private client

Awards RIBA South West Award 2022, RIBA House of the Year 2022

The Red House is a new brick house in rural Dorset, which is a playful take on the rural vernacular farmhouse, full of references, beautiful details, and consideration for the owners, present and future. Many of the house signifiers are exaggerated and the bold green eaves, doors and windows give it a unique identity. Playful extended eaves, bay windows and graphically laid out brickwork are signifiers of the internal plan and provide an eccentric appearance. 
 
The ground floor enfilade plan is cleverly ordered by the storage cores, creating an informal but connected series of spaces, unified by the material approach and beautiful end-grain larch wood-block parquet. The house is both compact but well-proportioned with great consideration given to future adaption and catering for elderly or less mobile residents and guests.

Internally, there are many subtle but inventive formal moves around the gables and eaves, which play out where the pitched soffits meet gables and ridges to create curved and rounded junctions to give a baroque quality.  
 
The material palette may appear utilitarian and pragmatic, but care has been taken to coordinate and orchestrate the materials and flows throughout the house, especially in the joinery. A sumptuous stair drops down through a projecting bay window.  
 
The clients’ requirements, specific and taste are evident throughout. The understated utilitarian appearance of the blockwork finishes and the contrasting artwork, furniture and inbuilt joinery, all successfully complementing one another.  
 
Overall, this is a project full of delight and invention, pragmatism, and eccentricity along with knowing references, formal and informal gestures.

Contractor Ken Biggs Contractors

Structural Engineers Momentum

Environmental / M&E Engineers SGA Consulting

Quantity Surveyor / Cost Consultant Peter Gunning & Partners

Landscape Architects Todd Longstaffe Gowan

Interior Design 8 Holland Street

Building Control Assent Building Control

CDM Consultant Insight CDM

Ecologist AEWC

Arboriculturalist Barrell Tree Consultancy