Project Information:

PiP were appointed by the owners of Old Mill House to design a new dwelling on the land adjacent to their current house. The client’s request for a house suitable not just for older occupants, but for people of all ages was achieved to ensure the house is usable by future occupants without the need for remodelling.

The project is sensitively designed to minimise any adverse visual impact and offers improvements to the biodiversity of the site whilst being intentionally contemporary to set a positive example for rural architecture in Huntingdonshire. Designed as a single story, this allows for accessibility without stairs. The narrow, linear form of the house is orientated to ensure that all key rooms have views down the site whilst also benefitting from natural light and heat. This narrow form presents its smallest elevation to Mill Road.

Externally, this allows the house to sit low to the site and, in conjunction with green roofs, reduce its visual bulk. By splitting the accommodation to ‘wings’, provision of sections such as the guest bedrooms can be shut off from the rest of the house, reducing heating costs and breaking up the building’s outline to further reduce its apparent size. This theme is continued in the choice of materials, with two stone clad wings joined by a contrasting lightweight structure of glass and timber.