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Caption: Architect Richard Found carves his home into the Cotswold landscape A contemporary design embraces an 18th-century cottage
Caption: It was still 2004 when Found and his wife, the art consultant and collector Jane Suitor, circled this 16.5-acre plot at the back of a local paper, its derelict cottage barely visible. They fell in love both with the idea of total isolation and the close proximity to art-world friends like Detmar Blow and Damien Hirst. Slapping down a deposit, the couple resolved to demolish the cottage and build an entirely contemporary structure away from the encroaching woodland.
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Caption: Almost immediately the cottage was spot-listed. Local planning officials announced a strict set of rules that would put the cottage at the heart of any design and preserve the sightlines to its front and rear facades.
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Caption: It seemed the ultimate curse. ‘When I got the call from the planners my back froze,’ says Found. ‘My friend had to slip me a Nurofen.’
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Caption: But necessity is the mother of invention.
Found went back to the planners with a sympathetic, barely perceptible extension in a local mix of concrete that matched the original Cotswold stone.
Above all he managed expectations.
'I proposed a 26m living room, knowing they'd knock it back to 23m - which is what I wanted anyway'.
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Caption: The curse would turn out to be a blessing, ultimately.
During the six-month cottage refurbishment, the floors were replaced with underfloor-heated pavers and the black-painted beams sandblasted to their original state.
Building into the hillside required a four-month excavation and the cement mixers were beset by problems.
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Caption: But the structural engineer loved the challenge: the 'massive' concrete keel underground and the 23m cantilever designed to support 200 people standing on the terrace.
Found eschewed cost-cutting columns to ensure that nothing obstructed the views.
‘I was obsessed with feeling like I was in the middle of a forest.’
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Caption: Today the cottage, a de facto guest house, exits into a stark staging area, where the couple plan to place a Paul McCarthy sculpture. Lengthy corridors lead to the bedrooms, in one direction, and the living spaces in the other. All open onto a garden by Lady Mary Keen, who ‘refused to plant anything not already in the forest’.
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Caption: Any modern distractions are restricted to a ‘media room’ adjacent to the cottage. That includes art. ‘Jane is desperate to put up a painting over the fireplace,’ says Found. For now, however, the ‘art’ is the incomparable view.
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Caption: Words, Ellen Himelfarb
Photography, Richard Found
Read the full story on http://thespaces.com/2016/03/10/architect-richard-found-carves-his-home-into-the-cotswold-landscape/
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