Springfield Farm, Bath.

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The clients Max and Diana, retired architects, chose Andrew Wood Associates from a not-so-short list of forty architects. They asked for their new home to be a contemporary and individual architectural piece; a home in which to display their art collection, and for the house to sit very comfortably within the rural environment. They asked for spaces, not rooms; divisions, not walls; and vertical and horizontal surfaces to display art, sculpture and ceramics.

 

After assisting Max and Diana with site finding and feasibility studies for sites across the south west, Springfield Farm was chosen for their new home. 

 

The site was a one acre paddock with a small decrepit farmer’s bungalow tucked in the corner of the plot. We designed the building in detail and submitted it to the Bath and North East Somerset Planning department (BaNES) in 2012. Planning permission was achieved in eight weeks through a smooth straight forward process, without revision, difficulty or any onerous conditions.

 

The house was designed to be free flowing, spaces were created through changes in floor level, all of which were focused towards the garden and the open valley views beyond. Care was taken to limit the impact of the house on the landscape. The roof of the first floor is no higher than the ridge of the original bungalow and the site is banked to allow the wild flower meadow to flow up and over the earth covered wing to the west.

 

The materials were chosen to further blend the building into its rural setting, with Frake hardwood cladding, which has quickly turned silver grey with weathering, grey renders to compliment the local limestone village buildings and limestone walls for the terrace and garden. The building was designed to be a sustainable low energy home, with solar hot water panels, triple glazing, a heat exchanger and an air tight building construction.

 

Construction was completed in 2014 as a self-build project. Andrew Wood Associates worked in conjunction with Designscape Limited. Springfield Farm won the RICS 2016 House of the Year Award - South West region.