David Kohn’s Norfolk home for gallery owner Stuart Shave represents a perfect marriage of architectural and human concerns.
Stable Acre is a holiday home situated in a former paddock on the edge of a working farm near the village of Haveringland, eight miles north-west of Norwich. The client’s brief was to create a bold contemporary house in this beautiful Norfolk site, with large, open plan and informal living space and a wide view of the landscape extending to the south-west. The quality of light, material palette and arrangement of rooms were of paramount importance in achieving an atmosphere of gentle calm and balance. Rather than a minimalist interior, a house that would celebrate life was a shared ambition of client and architect.
The contemporary construction and materials complete an, albeit fictional, ruin. The stereotomic elements – brick perimeter, concrete floor, brick pavilions – are overclad by the tectonic elements – the profiled metal roof, Crittall glazing and oak cladding. Consequently the seemingly familiar image of an agricultural barn gives way to a more complex proposition concerned with growth of the house over time.
