Rural brownfield scheme for creation of a new hamlet:

Landscape plan of rural development
Overhead plan view of the development illustrating the way that it integrates into the countryside with a pattern and selection of building forms and materials that suggest an organic growth over an extended period of time with elements drawn from the local vernacular.
Design:  Nick
Burnt House Lane frontage of a rural development on brownfield land. Design: Nick Baldry
New development scheme for a rural brownfield site, taking its cues from the local villages historic patterns of organic development spread over a span of time.

 

Modern Oast interpretation
A new take on the traditional oast form anchors the development in the Kent countryside, as well as providing a generously glazed living room and a mezzanine study within the first floor barrel.

 

Across pond view
An existing pond forming the focus and culmination of the site layout.  This development has been carefully designed with a deep understanding of the workings of agriculture, unlike many 'barn developments' which could never have been workable as farmyards, and consequently lack authenticity.

This is a carefully crafted development proposed for a brownfield site in a rural location.  It was created for a developer who recognised that many of those who want new homes in the countryside are looking for a genuine sense of authenticity, and are most definitely not seeking a housing estate.  The design was born from a careful analysis of the way in which rural hamlets and villages have grown organically from their first establishment, largely as a matter of necessity and practicality, in times when the main means of transport was walking and few people ventured far beyond the nearest town.  Buildings were grouped according to need, function and availability of land (often quite restricted even in rural settings).  Nevertheless fashion played a part in the appearance of houses, particularly as travel became easier for the wealthy, and the transport of 'foreign' materials became economically feasible.  Certain building types continued to be characteristic of particular localities, particularly working buildings, and the truly vernacular was displaced by common regional and national designs. (Vernacular building was that designed and built using local materials and experience, to suit local conditions, both physical and climatic, with little or no influence from outside.  It is a term widely misused today.  A Victorian terrace is not vernacular).

 

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