Highgate Studios 53-79 Highgate Road London NW51TL
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Hide House
Cotswolds
The Hide House is inspired by both the Modernist tradition of single storey houses as well as the work of the artist James Turrell, whose installations of precisely controlled apertures are instruments to intensify our experience of light, space and landscape. The repeating architectural motif of projecting or recessed trapezoidal openings is intended to express the solidity and hence the privacy of the building as well as sculpturally identifying important views- across the lake, across the courtyard, of the sky. These projections and indentations would read as clearly inside the building as outside giving a sense of the house as both reaching out to or receding from the landscape beyond. The house ‘breathes’ in and out. Some of the projections create a sloping floor surfaces, further emphasizing the house’s 3-dimensional purity, kind of like being inside a carved block of wood. The exterior is a contrasting composition of corten steel and mirrored glass panels that will transform at night into either clear openings or glowing translucent surfaces.