“What timber building in this country needs is a good publicist; it needs to be seen as hip, chic and cool.”
That’s the view of Jeremy Paxton, a man on a mission to build one of the UK’s more unusual vacation property developments. And it could be that the Lower Mill Estate he’s creating on a 550-acre slice of the Cotswold Water Park ends up giving timber building just the sort of profile he feels it needs.
Lower Mill is billed as a “a showpiece village of landmark new homes by some of the best architects in Britain and the world”. Paxton, who has devoted himself to the project for eight years and says it could take 25, sees it becoming the “Cotswold Hamptons”. It will eventually comprise 575 vacation homes. Most will be standard “modern vernacular” family dwellings (albeit luxurious and starting at around £400,000). Then there will be 46 ‘Land Mark’ houses in the seven-figure plus bracket. The idea is that these all push the boundaries of building performance and aesthetics and Paxton is inviting big-hitter architects worldwide to design them.
The other key criterion for Lower Mill houses is that they are state-of-the-art in terms of environmental performance. Tying in with his eco-commitment – he views the Estate as “a nature reserve with homes attached” and the construction company working on the estate is Conservation Builders – Paxton is self-evidently an enthusiast for wood in building. “I’m passionate about it,” he said. “From the right sources it’s renewable and sustainable and we’re using it extensively, both new and recycled. People like living with it too. It plays a physical and emotional role in the building.”
He hastened to add that Lower Mill is not going to be a timber construction theme park – in fact, far from it. The stipulation that the houses combine “great design and vision” with minimal environmental impact and maximum energy efficiency has so far been met in the 80 standard houses completed with a diverse pallet of materials. And the first Land Mark home to be built is Somerford Villa, a steel, glass and concrete creation by the Estate’s architectural director Richard Reid.
That said, Paxton does see more overtly wood-based housing as a vital part of the Lower Mill mix and, predictably, he doesn’t want it to be of the shy and retiring variety.
“Many builders’ idea of timber building is a covered-up softwood frame or wood panel structure, or the log cabin look finished in some bile-coloured treatment. What is needed to move the market forward is for timber to sell itself to the design community and attract more highbrow architects so it’s used in truly contemporary buildings – and used boldly, not hidden away.”
This, he said, is the approach being taken by Richard Reid for the latest group of “standard” houses at Lower Mill, á
Ü described as a 21st century take on the barn-style dwelling.
“These will be all oak-framed, with untreated shiplap and tongued and grooved cladding,” said Reid. “The inspiration is British timber building vernacular, not the Nordic style some developments have gone for.”
The houses will have sleek modern interiors, but marry these with open display of oak frame and a true barn structure. “Too many new barn-style houses and conversions break up the interior, destroying any sense of a barn. We’ll avoid compartmentalising the body of the building by suspending a platform from the roof structure to create some rooms and using ‘outshuts’ – effectively lean-to’s – for others.”
Lower Mill is conceived as a series of hamlets, and the Land Mark houses are intended to provide a structural focus, the equivalent, said Reid, of the local manor house, village pub or church.
One Land Mark design which has been a media focus more than most is another timber creation, the Orchid House from Featherstone Associates. The body of the building is ovular, with sharply square steel and glass room pods set within. On the ground floor frond-like wings extend either side, with a stretch of pontoon deck between leading straight onto the Estate’s lake. The house will be clad top to bottom in cedar shingles, with a camouflage pattern ‘burned’ into the wood.
The design inspiration is the bee orchid, with the exterior shell and living and dining room wings forming a “whorl of petals, encircling the seed of the flower”.
“It’s a very organic structure, and we wanted that to be reflected through the materials,” said Sarah Featherstone. “The interiors are slick and polished, but the exterior is the opposite; quite rough, almost unfinished, so that it really sits into the scenery.”
Working with Megan Yates of structural engineers Techniker Consulting, the structure devised by Featherstone is based on a hooped LVL portal frame.
“The geometry needs some work, but the idea is that the frame tapers towards the foundation and appears to touch the ground lightly,” said Yates. “An external skin gives stability in other directions, essentially forming a small monocoque, while the wings are a timber gridshell.”
Another essential part of the structure will be the floors which will be unsupported internally, fixing directly into the frame. These will comprise prefabricated biaxial laminated engineered wood panels, such as those produced by KLH and Eurban (Lenotec).
Part of the inspiration for Alison Brooks Architects’ Land Mark design, Hide House, is the work of artist James Turrell whose ‘installation’ works create “precisely controlled apertures to intensify experience of light, space and landscape”.
“We didn’t want a modernist glass box with views all round,” said Alison Brooks. “There will be other properties quite nearby, so the house is designed to focus on uninterrupted views precisely framed through projecting or recessed trapezoidal openings.”
Like the Orchid House, Hide House will use prefabricated cross-laminated timber panels, but far more extensively, for walls and ceilings and possibly floors too.
“I’m a great fan of the dry building site and wanted to use sustainable material,” said Canadian Brooks. “We’re also aiming to have a low impact on the site and, with the panels, we can use mini pile foundations.”
The initial proposal is to leave the the birch-ply internal faces of the panels exposed to give the “experience of a three-dimensional timber surface, blurring the distinction between vertical and horizontal surfaces.
“You could dry-line the interior, but we were clear that this is different from a painted and plastered urban house,” said Brooks. “The wood is warm, easy to live with and low maintenance.”
Externally, the Hide House couldn’t be more different; clad in corten steel, with mirrored-glass windows.
“Timber cladding might be interesting, but the house is designed to be low on the horizon and the reflecting glass blends it into the surroundings. I also like the idea of this enigmatic sculpture gently rusting at the water’s edge.”
Will Alsop was clearly put out when the occupant of a house he’d designed with plain plywood exterior cladding painted it blue and yellow. Unperturbed, however, his Land Mark design is intended to use unadorned Kerto laminated veneer lumber (LVL) which he views as a “heavy-duty plywood”.
The 25x12m arched structure has the look of a designer hangar, with the rear section in LVL mirrored at the front with a glazed “winter garden”. A free-standing concrete structure in the living area houses utility rooms on the ground floor with the kitchen alongside. Upstairs it accommodates bathrooms and leads to the three bedrooms in suspended timber framed, cedar-clad pods.
The core structure of the living area will be a glulam frame and the LVL cladding will run inside and out, with the space between filled with insulation.
“Outside the LVL lasts as long as brick and block and internally the phenolic resin finish makes for easy maintenance,” said Alsop. “The only advice I’ll give the buyer will be for God’s sake don’t paint it’!”
Other Land Mark designs devised to date feature timber cladding like you’ve never seen it before. Roger Sherman’s ‘Flex-Deck-spec’ house, which has giant wood ‘deck chair’ shaped skylights’ on the roof, is almost entirely encased. And ‘Watermark House’ from Piers Gough of CZWG has hefty rough, untreated ‘split-log’ cedar cladding all around its spiralling walls.
Sutherland Hussey Architects’ Boat House features a timber ‘arbour’, likely to be in Douglas fir, that forms a slatted cage around the concrete, steel, glass and timber. This has some structural and shading function but, according to Charlie Sutherland, is also intended, like Brooks’ trapezoidal openings, to frame views and create the feeling that the building is alone in the landscape.
When Lower Mill was mooted, it undoubtedly caused some sceptical head shaking – and most of it is still in the form of computer generated images. But Paxton is clearly confident the vision will become reality and is happy about the pace of construction. “We’re a debt-free, independent operation. So we can take the time to do it right.”
When complete, he said, the development will be “the UK’s most significant collection of modernist architecture” – not to mention some pretty hip, chic and cool timber building.
