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Glen View

Sitting at the heart of a gentle and picturesque landscape, this small house looks out upon open fields and mature trees in Suffolk.

Tucked into the undulating topography, Glen view is subtle in its design, discreet, with its treated larch cladding reminiscent of East Anglian barns. On approach, one sees a contemporary silhouette, accentuated by the black pitch on the timber coat. It is a modern cabin with a modesty of scale that combines with a crafted, geometric aesthetic.

At just £250,000, the budget required a degree of imagination to achieve as much as possible within limited means. The challenge was to create a kind of prototype for a new generation of modern country houses that would be relatively affordable but also contextual and crafted.

“If the need to cut his cloth to a less than usually lavish budget proved a challenge, it is one that he (Gorst) has risen to it with great style, producing a building that is a real object lesson in making the best use of limited resources.”

BD, 15th January 2010
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James Gorst’s work has helped to heal one of the most unnecessary and painful wounds in contemporary British architecture: between the traditionalists and the modernists. Like Louis Kahn in the United States or Peter Zumthor in Switzerland, Gorst reminds us that modernism can be beautifully reconciled with the underlying principles of classicism and that modern materials and idioms can carry all the elegance, dignity and grandeur associated with historical masterpieces.

Alain de Botton

© 2023 James Gorst Architects. All rights reserved.

Design: Tom Green Design. Build: Designagogo.