A&B’s House

Location: Northamptonshire
Services: Architect, Principal Designer
Status: Planning Stage
Principal Consultants: PLAN Landscape Designer, James Warley Planning Consultant

Architecture emerging from the landscape – a crafted, landscape-driven design for a sustainable home shaped by place and designed for living within its surroundings.

Set within the rolling countryside of Northamptonshire, A&B’s House is a carefully considered new home where architecture and landscape are inseparable. Designed under Paragraph 84 for its exceptional quality, the house reveals itself slowly – emerging from the land rather than sitting upon it.

From the village, the building appears calm and familiar: a simple two-storey form with pitched roofs that echo nearby houses and agricultural buildings. As the site falls away, the home opens out, with single-storey wings tucked into the slope and green roofs dissolving into planting. Stone walls rise from the contours of the land, reading first as extensions of the existing quarry walls before becoming the fabric of the house itself. Inside and outside are deeply connected. Large openings frame long views, while paths, seating, meadow planting and fruit trees encourage year-round family exploration and adventure in the landscape. 

At the front, curved stone garden walls wrap inward to form the entrance. The masonry is carefully banded, with courses reducing in size as the walls rise, and deep reveals expressing the thickness of the stone. Above, the upper level is articulated in timber – lighter in tone and texture – with vertical fins and areas of permeable ‘hit-and-miss’ cladding that introduce depth, shadow and softness. To the rear, a timber-framed curtain wall opens the house to the landscape, framed by stone chimneys and deep roof overhangs that provide shade and protection. 

Material choices are based on the building being part of the landscape and the locale, prioritising longevity, performance and local sourcing. Stone and timber are selected as part of the contextual response and offer beauty and contrast as well as low embodied energy, with reclaimed materials used wherever possible. Natural insulation, lime and clay plasters, and efficient structural spans reduce carbon impact while enhancing comfort and breathability. Earthworks are balanced across the site, excavated earth is reused, and extensive planting – including new trees and meadow landscapes – form key parts of the carbon reduction strategy.