House Behind the Wall

The site was an orchard enclosed by a granite wall older than the road outside it. We kept the wall untouched and set the house a metre behind it, so that from the lane you see stone first and architecture second.

One concrete roof plate does most of the work. It spans the living rooms, then carries on past the line of the wall to shade a terrace that faces the afternoon. Below it the rooms are simple: a long kitchen, a library wall, three bedrooms with deep reveals.

The concrete was poured against rough pine boards from a local sawmill. Floors are honed limestone; joinery is untreated oak. Nothing is painted.