Bekstone House
Studio 11 Architecture

The brief for this project was to create a family home in Crowland, Lincolnshire, encompassing the clients' lifestyle and their love of Californian mid-century architecture, better known as Desert Modernism. Studio 11 developed a building with a form and materials echoing the rural agricultural and industrial architecture surrounding the site. The proposed home boasted the large open spaces and vast glazed areas the clients craved with a modern mix of traditional materials and sustainable elements. The planning committee granted planning permission, which came with strict conditions, for the first Paragraph 55 (now Paragraph 80) house in the District of South Holland. Among the conditions were details of the external materials which reflected the industrial/agricultural vernacular of the area. Bekstone Tumbled Buff was chosen to reflect stone-built housing along the building's location in Plank Drove. Zinc was suggested to balance between a domestic home and the surrounding industrial buildings. Balau, an FSC certified hardwood, was chosen to clad areas of the main body of the house to reflect the form of timber cladding of surrounding barns. Internally, the L shaped floor plan accommodates spacious open plan living on the ground floor, and a bespoke steel staircase leads to the gallery style landing with a viewing platform, where full height glazing frames views over the countryside at the front of the house.