Narula House

Located on the banks of the River Loddon, a tributary of the Thames near Wargrave in Berkshire the house sits within Flood Zone 3b with a potential flood depth of 1.17m in the worst-case scenario. Our design places the house on stilts which raises the house by 2.2m above the 1:100 year plus predicted Climate Change flood level to make a useful space for casual parking. The house ‘floats’ across the site in a single, linear form and is aligned on the cardinal points north-south. The linear form plays against the meandering river – the linear against the arabesque. Approaching the house an open treads staircase climbs up to the entrance deck.  A natural iroko front door is sheltered beneath a canopy to provide a welcoming and sheltered point of arrival. Inside, the lobby is generous and immediately offers surprise as it opens onto a raised outdoor court that is framed to the sky and has a staircase back down to the grassy riverbank.

To one side of the outdoor court lies a large open-plan living space with no structural columns to the glazed riverfront, offering unbroken panoramic views of the river.  A balcony runs along the length of the living space with glass balustrading, sheltered beneath the oversailing roof – this roof also oversails the bedrooms and ancillary rooms, lending solar shading and providing an abstract, reading of the volume as folded planes. To the other side, a generous circulation space runs along the north side of the house with storage to one side, serving study, media room, utility spaces, cloakroom, and three bedrooms all with en-suite bathrooms. A brick chimney, with a barbeque at the ground and first-floor levels combined with a woodburning stove in the living room, anchors the house to the site.

From the main entrance, a glass link connects to a freestanding pavilion provides a ‘granny flat’ for guests. The house has a slender steel-framed structure, infilled with timber framing and insulation, all bearing on piled foundations (one per column). Larch cladding, coated with a translucent preservative that slowly reacts to UV light to lend a whitish tone makes the whole form slightly abstract seen against the surrounding nature. Dark grey cementitious boarded infills sit between glazing panels. An earthy grey brick forms the chimney structure and three fins containing service drops.