Our client wished for a 2 storey dwelling with a contemporary modern design with rural/rustic characteristics and an attached garage. Provision of natural light was important including capturing the views. Our client requested that the kitchen was to be the heart of the home where all the family could congregate.

Located within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty; Steep terrain; ensuring established planning permission remained valid; integration with the context

This home was designed with the site particulars, context and location in mind within the Antrim Coast & Glens Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Visible from the subject site are a number of natural features: to its West are the dramatic Sallagh Brae cliff faces plunging down to the farmland below, and to its East is the mixed woodland of Chaines Wood, skirting the outer western surroundings of Carnfunnock Country Park. The design comprises a contemporary two storey house design in reaction to the massive rock faces of Sallagh Brae that it looks out towards. The form is broken down into volumes of different heights allowing the whole to be read in a smaller scale overall, and at different scales from different viewpoints. The house is bedded into the site, with the lower ground floor sunken into the terrain in order to keep a sensitive scale to the dwelling and to sensitively integrate into the natural contours of the site. The main accommodation of the house comprises 4 blocks distinguishable by them each having their own roof of various mono-pitch arrangements. These 4 elements are linked by the lowest flat roof spine. In the same manner the walls of each of the 4 blocks are distinguishable from one another by the careful positioning of glazing in purposeful solid to void composition. Whilst these 4 elements make up the primary body of the house, there are a further 2 subservient elements also linked which comprise of the lounge/study, and the integral garage. The lounge/study block is single storey, whilst the garage block is sunk into the site as part of the massing and scale strategy to ensure the whole intervention beds down into the ground to be most sensitively absorbed into the site. A monolithic approach to materials has been proposed to imbue the design with a sense of solidity and presence, a direct response to the mass of rock that is the Sallagh Brae cliffs facing the site. The external walls are natural stone with natural slate roof. This is a simple material palette and one which is consistent with traditional rural vernacular architecture in the Northern Irish countryside.