The RIBA House of the Year has been won by Red House, an unusual new build brick home in rural Dorset designed by David Kohn Architects.
RIBA described the house as a “playful take on the rural vernacular farmhouse, full of references, beautiful details, and consideration for the owners, present and future.”
The house, designed for an art collector’s family, sits on a crest of a hill and has bright green-painted eaves, as well as doors and windows, giving it a “unique identity.” RIBA commented that the “extended eaves, bay windows and graphically laid out brickwork are signifiers of the internal plan and provide an eccentric appearance.”
Kohn took inspiration from English houses “from the arts and crafts to the Smithsons,” and said that “each room has a tailored relationship to both its landscape setting and the particular way the owners wish to live.”
The ground floor plan, said RIBA, is an “informal but connected series of spaces, unified by the material approach and beautiful end-grain larch wood-block parquet.” In addition, there are “subtle but inventive formal moves around the gables and eaves, which play out where the pitched soffits meet gables and ridges to create curved and rounded junctions to give a baroque quality.”
RIBA added: “The material palette may appear utilitarian and pragmatic, but care has been taken to co-ordinate and orchestrate the materials and flows throughout the house, especially in the joinery.”
David Kohn commented: “This is a validation of the ambition and unerring support of our clients and the dedication of the whole project team. Furthermore, the jury have chosen to support architecture that is intimate, playful, colourful, and engages both with its context and history. I could not be more delighted.”