A U.K. Farmstead Tests the Limits of Country Living—Down to a Hot Pink Structure

The estate’s four-unit indoor/outdoor complex endeavors to engage with its wooded setting, but isn’t afraid to make a statement in the process.

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Project Details:

Location: Suffolk, United Kingdom

Architect: Sanei + Hopkins / @saneihopkins

Footprint: 5,500 square feet

Structural Engineer: Teckniker Consulting Engineers

Civil Engineer: G C Robertson

Environmental, M&E, and Sustainability Consultant: Max Fordham LLP

SIPS Structural Engineer: JMS Engineers

Photographer: Peter Landers

From the Architect: “Housestead is a new experimental family home set within the Suffolk Coast & Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the grounds of a historic 400-acre estate. Like a farmstead, it comprises several interrelated yet distinct buildings. These four buildings, accommodating Amir Sanei’s and Abigail Hopkins’s family of seven, have dedicated functions focused on living, sleeping, working, and utility. As an architects’ house for a family of architects, Housestead is a living prototype for advancing sustainable rural design and regenerative architecture.

“Sanei + Hopkins’s intention was to reimagine rural domestic life through a radical yet contextual reinterpretation of the traditional English farmstead within a neglected grove of non-indigenous birch trees that offer both a building site and an ecological opportunity: to regenerate Suffolk coastal heathland and build a home embedded in landscape, history, and future care. The design includes a network of peripheral ‘cottage’ lodges, a cruciform cluster of four geometrical volumes arranged around a central yard and orientated to cardinal points, to the path of the sun and to views beyond. Unlike the inward-facing farmyards of historical precedent, the composition is purposefully extroverted, or open to the surrounding landscape and its ecology.

“Each building is both functionally and symbolically discrete. The thatched and fully glazed south-facing living block captures winter sun and expansive views. The east sleeping block doubles as a ‘habitable greenhouse’, integrating solar and thermal technologies. The west working block features a studio and elevated study with long views. The north utility block and ‘Moongate entrance’ complete the ensemble providing a practical and symbolic threshold to the house.The courtyard between is the heart of the scheme. Together with the other external circulation, the spaces between the buildings act as a threshold between interior life and the wider landscape. These open-air lobbies invite the occupants to experience nature as part of daily movement.