Project overview
Kingston upon Thames
Winner of the Manser Medal for the best new house in the UK, the House in Coombe Park is a distinctive contemporary building, strikingly different in its appearance from its pastiche neo-classical neighbours, but celebrated by the local Kingston Design Review Panel as being a ‘quintessentially “Coombe” house’ which uses its landscape context to drive a unique memorable architectural response.
A focal oak tree in the garden formed the basis for the curved geometries of the house, which are repeated in a rotational symmetry to form a ‘trefoil’ on plan. The lower garden level housing the living spaces is cut into the slope of the hillside with full height glazing opening to the garden, whilst a master bedroom suite hovers above the open entrance level. A green roof lawn runs across the entrance level with large shaped rooflights providing light to below. The landscape envelopes the building and its geometries are continued in a natural swimming pond set in the undulating lawns.
The distinctive trefoil form is repeated throughout the project as a unique motif, from bespoke cladding profiles to door handles, further elevating the unique design and unifying the project as a gesamkunstwerk – a ‘total artwork’ – with consistent rigorous design from the scale of the site right down to the minute details.
