On the outskirts of London, on the edge of a forest and in front of hills and fields, a Beautiful and little country house It arose from an agricultural building in disuse built with masonry, concrete and asbestos that was in a deplorable state when its new owners wanted to make it habitable. «It was an old abandoned dependence oriented to the south,» explains the architect and decorator Craig Hutchinson, who received the commission to completely renew the building and turn it into a small vacation house. «The idea was to create a bucolic retirement, a relaxing refuge to connect with nature again. The project should be respectful of the environment in terms of palette of materials, scale and proportions, but also of a contemporary nature.» The work done by Hutch Design implied the partial demolition, as well as architectural and structural modifications of the building, its interior design and its decoration, with the link with nature and landscape as a conductive thread.
A concrete fireplace
«Instead of dividing the plant into compartmentalized stays or treating it as a single open space – which, contraintuitively, would give the impression of being smaller – we decided to create an open plant that revolves around a central reinforced concrete chimney,» says the architect. To its right, on the kitchen side, a open opening leads to the bedroom, while on its left, on the window side, a lower opening and another in the upper part of an elmo wooden library reveal the bedroom area and the bathroom, with its spectacular but discreet sunk bath. To make the most of the space, sliding doors, windows and wood pillars were placed outside the walls, a trick that visually enlarges the interior.
«The different areas of being are interconnected, so that, wherever you are, there is always a framed view of the beautiful hills and the landscape,» emphasizes the designer. In a contemporary reinterpretation of the Tudor cabins, Craig Hutchinson was inspired by the English cabins with visually heavy straw roofs, very high chimneys and structurally exposed COB walls. This is reflected in the solid larch wood roof and structural columns, which acquire a silver gray patina over time, and in the original concrete central chimney.