Dow Jones Architects

This new-build house in an orchard provides a family home for a writer and designer.

The timber-clad house, completed 2014, is designed as a series of layered spaces that extend into and around the fruit trees, creating deep thresholds between spaces both inside and out. These deep thresholds provide a spatial generosity within the quiet form of the house.

The location of the established fruit trees informed the plan of the house. Retaining the sense of enclosure within the site, while bringing a view of the sea from the upper floor, and responding to the particular placement of the fruit trees, generated the placement of rooms and spaces on the site.