The main house is arranged on a single principal floor. Entry is from the east, via a small motor court containing a garage and sheltered parking. The house is composed of two long wings sitting to the north and south, bridged by a large folded roof canopy which houses the main public spaces.
The guest house is laid out over two floors, linked by a continuous sloping roof plane and set back into an existing escarpment running north/south, dividing the two properties. Car entry is from the road to the north into a small shaded parking area.
MODEL OF BENTLEY MAY VARY DEPENDING ON AVAILABILITY
From the outset, John Pawson’s work has focused on ways of approaching fundamental problems of space, proportion, light and materials, rather than on developing a set of stylistic mannerisms. Early commissions included homes for the writer Bruce Chatwin, opera director Pierre Audi and collector Doris Lockhart Saatchi, together with art galleries in London, Dublin and New York.
Whilst private houses have remained a consistent strand of his work, subsequent projects have spanned a wide range of scales and building typologies, ranging from Calvin Klein Collection’s flagship store in Manhattan and airport lounges for Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong, to a condominium for In Schrager on New York’s Gramercy Park, the interior of a 50-metre yacht and sets for new ballets at London’s Royal Opera House and the Opéra Bastille in Paris.
Over the years John Pawson has accrued extensive experience of the particular challenges of working within environments of historic, landscape and ecological significance. Key examples include the Sackler Crossing - a walkway over the lake at London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - the Cistercian monastery of Our Lady of Novy Dvur in Bohemia, and the former Commonwealth Institute in London - a new permanent home for the Design Museum.
