Hall McKnight was selected for this project through a competition organised by Malcolm Reading Consultants – through this process a team of practices was identified, each of whom is developing a project within the masterplan.

In response to our plot, we have developed 2 house–types that can respond to varying conditions as demonstrated in our grouping of 5 houses within our allocated plot. Both house types have a corresponding character resulting from use of shared proportions and dimensions based around the square and √2 rectangle. The use of ideal mathematical proportions is intended to imbue the houses with an underlying sense of calm and harmony – and offer an underlying order that maintains a geometric relationship and coherence which endures through variations in material, orientation etc.

The walls and hedges that define the plot and its individual sites extend and propagate beyond the plot’s boundaries to engage with the adjacent conditions to form pathways, raised beds and a small park–like space. Rather than retreating behind their own borders, this strategy allows these 5 houses to become embedded within the masterplan.
 
Just as the Hunting Lodge and its courtyard have, in a sense, primed the central area of the site with some existing man–made structures against which development can respond, we similarly imagined the wider masterplan site to be inhabited with a scattering of subsidiary forms (walls, house–bases, courts etc) that might be thought of as forgotten or imagined ruins – abstract and archaic in nature. These are the elements within the masterplan that allows its disparate pieces to become gathered together and take on a village–like quality.