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Short filmTranscript
00:00Competition gets a bad rep these days, doesn't it?
00:04I mean, you can get a medal just for turning up.
00:07Darwin, however, he said that competition leads to evolution,
00:11the means whereby we advance, how we improve our lot and ourselves.
00:17And so it is with the Royal Institute of British Architects House of the Year Award 2025.
00:23Knuckle-draggers not welcome.
00:27In the great ecosystem of British housing, these are the apex predators.
00:32Sharp, instinctive and fully evolved.
00:36That's clever. Oh, heavens.
00:39The judges have chosen a long list of Britain's most remarkable new buildings.
00:44Oh, this is really, really good.
00:47From houses that were a battle to build.
00:51It was extreme living, I would say.
00:53I was sharing my caravan with my dog.
00:55We didn't have a shower on site.
00:57To those homes that positively glow.
01:00Oh, my Lord.
01:01It's good from down below, but it's better from up here because...
01:04I know, right?
01:05The houses we explore will be whittled down to a short list of just seven.
01:10The range on offer is really, really exciting.
01:13I think it'll be really exciting to see the house that wins and shines through.
01:17Before we find out in the final program which one is crowned House of the Year 2025.
01:24So join us as we bring you this year's pinnacle of house-building evolution.
01:30So far, three homes have claimed their place on the short list.
01:45Kirk and the Craig on the Isle of Harris.
01:48Hastings House, a triumph of engineering and elegance.
01:51And Triangle House, a home that takes you away to the Caribbean.
01:54Now we have six more buildings to explore.
02:01Snooping around them with me is the architect, Damien Burrows.
02:08Oh, this is breathtaking.
02:12And the conservation architect, Natasha Huck.
02:16Oh, look at this place.
02:17This is the architect.
02:18It's the architect, Damien Burrows.
02:22Oh, this is breathtaking.
02:26And the conservation architect, Natasha Huck.
02:29Oh, look at this place. It's just so welcoming.
02:34This time, we're looking at houses that celebrate their materials and their craftsmanship.
02:39And if you think that craft these days is all about hand-wittled cotton buds
02:44or crocheted modesty toilet roll holders, then think again,
02:48because in the 21st century, craftsmanship is expressed in buildings.
02:54So expect concrete, steel, lasers, alongside the usual timber and stone.
03:00It's going to be risky. It's going to be exciting.
03:04It's going to be a little bit dangerous.
03:09And in Cambridge, our first long-lister comes with a health warning.
03:14Dangerously absorbing craftsmanship.
03:17The sort that stops you in your tracks and could see you missing lunch, tea, and possibly winter.
03:25Well, this is lovely.
03:29This is mill hide. Outside, weathered, rust-red steel.
03:35Inside, cool, white Italian limestone.
03:39A house of contrasts.
03:41Hello.
03:42Brought together by its architect owner, Tim, and his wife, Liz.
03:51What a lovely moment arriving here.
03:53Tucked into the Cambridge of Fenland, mill hide is an extraordinary sculptural home.
04:02It's designed around a central courtyard or winter garden with a giant roof light that actually opens.
04:09All the rooms are off this space.
04:11There's a kitchen, a living area, come dining space, then three bedrooms and three bathrooms.
04:17All encased in what looks like a continuous skin of rusty steel.
04:26I'd expect to find a cladding system of panels where the gaps are all millimeter equal.
04:32But here, they're very tightly butted.
04:36Tim is known as Millimeter Tim in the business round.
04:40I like that, though.
04:41I mean, we could do with a few more millimeter people.
04:44I wanted this to appear as though it was a piece of solid steel.
04:47But that skin is designed in such a way that there are no visible fixings.
04:53The corners or the window reveals are always folded, so you never see the thickness of the metal.
04:59So that it actually gives you that feeling of total solidity.
05:03That's really elegantly sorcery.
05:07The inspiration for this was the work of the world-famous sculptor Richard Serra,
05:12who specialised in working with steel.
05:14I mean, he's a great sculptor.
05:17And thinking about a piece of sculpture in the landscape, you know,
05:21you have to look at something like art in the landscape in New Zealand,
05:24which is 280 meters,
05:27quart-end steel, 40 millimeters thick, six meters high.
05:32And that was what I wanted to achieve.
05:37Step inside, and holy Illuminati!
05:40It's bright, white, calm, like walking into the centre of a cloud.
05:47You walk into the Winter Garden, an internal courtyard at the centre of the house,
05:52from which all the rooms radiate.
05:54The intention was you have open space on all four sides, but the ability to actually close that off in such a way that those openings became part of the internal surface of the central court.
06:08And, you know, so they pivoted doors, which...
06:13Well, they do move. They do pivot, yeah. Right.
06:16So, by a very simple motion.
06:19Oh, very light.
06:21They're just on a little...
06:23They're on spring-loaded pivots.
06:25Oh, wow, that's so elegant.
06:27So they land exactly where they should. Bye, Liz!
06:29Bye!
06:31So, with all the doors closed, this becomes a gallery, and it has that enclosure quality.
06:39Very, very clever indeed.
06:41This is super satisfying because, and I would expect nothing else, Tim,
06:45that the illusion and the integrity of that wall only works because everything's absolutely in line and flush.
06:54Millimetres again? Yeah.
06:59That's not the only trick this space offers.
07:03Would you like to see the roof light open?
07:06Yeah, I dearly would.
07:08Yeah.
07:10I mean, here we are. We're inside the building.
07:13So cli...
07:15So clearly.
07:17Oh, the entire thing slides.
07:22Oh, heavens.
07:24The light changes and shifts.
07:37Doors open and close and spaces change.
07:41This house feels like a living, breathing thing.
07:45Do you know, when I first saw this place, I thought,
07:48goodness me, that looks so calm and still and unchanging and almost impregnable, you know?
07:56Then I realised, of course, inside it's the exact opposite.
07:59Its potential to change is vast.
08:01It's changing all the time.
08:03Things are moving.
08:05Spaces are opening up.
08:07Just reminds me that great architecture has got very little to do with what things look like.
08:14And much more to do with what places feel like.
08:24We've seen one house so far.
08:27Five more to go until we find out which will be shortlisted for the House of the Year 2025.
08:32Ah, suburbia.
08:46That curious British in-between, neatly balanced between the buzz of the city and the calm of the countryside.
08:55A land built on brick bay windows, garden walls, decorative lintels, each a quiet celebration of everyday craft.
09:03Our next house doesn't just nod to that tradition, it reinvents it.
09:09It is a love letter to local materials and a masterclass in modern craftsmanship.
09:21Leber and Nicole set up their own architectural practice three years ago.
09:26The chance to do their first project together came about one Christmas at Nicole's parents' home.
09:36It was very cramped.
09:39One Christmas, we were trying to get everyone in the space we had.
09:42It was impossible.
09:44So Lemma said, I can make it better.
09:49And he did.
09:51So we said, right, get some plans done and have a look.
09:54The house in Norfolk was a beautiful Victorian home with a leaky extension built in the 1990s.
10:03The extension came down.
10:05And instead, Lemma and Nicole built this beautiful brick box for 500,000 pounds.
10:18The new addition to the old house gives Nicole's parents all the space they need for entertaining.
10:24With a kitchen, dining room and living space all in one, all wrapped in beautiful brick detailing.
10:34We looked around the local area and there's really beautiful detailing on a lot of the houses.
10:39The particular ribbed brick work was inspired by the chimney on the house.
10:44And the cast corbels were inspired by the dog-toothed corbeling on the existing house.
10:51So it was kind of a contemporary take on the existing details.
10:54Corbeling is where bricks jut out above one another.
10:59Dog-toothed corbeling is where they stick out diagonally in a sharp point.
11:05You see brick corbeling done, but it doesn't have that point of difference that we wanted to kind of achieve when we were thinking about introducing contemporary elements to the house.
11:13That point of difference was using bricks in the middle and then concrete at the top to form continuous dog-tooth panels.
11:24It was cast in specially made moulds cut from plastic foam.
11:27These were placed into formwork boxes and then the concrete poured, tinted brick red with dye.
11:35In the back of the garden, we had some fencing set up and a concrete mixer.
11:41I mean, it looked like a blood bath because it was pigmented concrete.
11:45For a good, like, six months, you'd know where we'd been.
11:48Every day you'd come home and you'd rinse off your hands like Lady Macbeth.
11:52When the first section of concrete was poured and had set, the pressure was on.
11:57It kind of started a stopwatch, really, where we had to rush to get everything cast in time for the bricklayers to come back and install it.
12:05Lemma and Nicole had to race to cast the next piece of concrete before the bricklayer had finished the previous section of wall.
12:13We had quite a gruelling casting schedule.
12:17We had some days where we were casting and then the next day we'd be leaving them to set
12:23and then taking them out of the moulds, repairing the moulds because we tried to reuse as many of them as possible.
12:30And then the cycle would start again because we ended up doing the casting over winter.
12:35So it obviously got cold, it was very wet and there were some days where it got kind of closer to freezing
12:40so we had to be really looking at whether or not the concrete was set properly, keeping it warm.
12:46Nothing on this project came easily, just as outside the concrete was painstakingly cast by Lemma and Nicole.
12:53So the kitchen living space inside was also hard won. All the timber joinery was stained and oiled by them too.
13:04What's more, each piece of it had to be labelled and driven by them from their workshop in London to Norfolk.
13:11We put 15,000 miles on the clock. It was a big sacrifice and a big personal effort overall to kind of keep things moving.
13:20So what do Nicole's parents make of it?
13:22The kitchen has been transformed. I'd be in the kitchen by myself cooking while they were all doing things in other rooms.
13:34Now people sit round the island or sit at the table.
13:42An audience is important for this.
13:45Lots of people come and see it. It's one of the first things we show them because they just all say, I want the spice drawer.
13:56You did all the labelling yourself?
13:58Yes, of course.
14:00I was colour coded into like red for hot, European and American.
14:07A colour coded spice drawer lets you know that people here care.
14:14Perhaps a little too much.
14:17This is a house built by passionate obsessives.
14:20A testament to what's possible when you embrace the hard way,
14:24chase the details and go all in on making something extraordinary.
14:28Many of us build our houses not just to please ourselves, but also the neighbours.
14:40To fit the postcode, to conform to the planning rules.
14:43But what if you didn't?
14:45I mean, what if you built something that quietly threw caution and convention
14:49and the street's colour palette to the wind and instead used its materials to stand apart?
14:55At home with a distinct voice, measured, graceful and just provocative enough to feature in the neighbourhood WhatsApp group.
15:05That would be something, wouldn't it?
15:13I'm in South West London to see our next building that's not afraid to make an entrance.
15:18On a beautiful riverside street like this, each one of these houses is playing a careful game of one-upmanship.
15:27But these houses politely jostle.
15:34Lower Ham doesn't. It throws bread rolls.
15:38It's bold, brilliant and as carefully crafted as a punk's mohawk.
15:42It's a building that's loud, proud, full of poise and attitude.
15:57This extraordinary home has a single-storey extension and a tower.
16:02The single-storey section has a front office, comfortable guest bedroom and downstairs bathroom.
16:07There's also a spacious open-planned kitchen connecting to a cosy snug.
16:13Beyond this, there are two additional bedrooms.
16:17Both open directly onto a serene central courtyard garden.
16:21In the tower, on the ground floor there is a dining room.
16:25The first floor is home to the main living area, while the top floor is devoted to a luxurious master bedroom suite.
16:33At the rear of the house is a garden space complete with a versatile summer house that doubles as an office.
16:41The owner is retired marketing director, John.
16:47Walking up the street, this makes an impression.
16:51I mean, it stands out. It's really quite splendid.
16:53It is somewhat different.
16:55And if I had £1 for everybody that had commented on it, stopped and photographed it, I could have paid for the whole house.
17:03This is a fantastic approach.
17:08And what an entrance.
17:11Could we have a moment for this door? The scale of this, John.
17:17I mean, it's huge.
17:20Yes, it is.
17:22I mean, the material quality here, this is brass, isn't it?
17:24Yes.
17:25That is not something you would normally use on a door.
17:28No.
17:29It's heavy, it's expensive.
17:31It's something that you would normally use for a door handle or a letterbox.
17:34Yes.
17:35It sets the scene for the whole house.
17:37I think this attention to detail you will find goes through the house as a whole.
17:42And that's a tribute to the architects.
17:44Step inside and the loud shapes and extravagant materials on the outside soften to something more serene.
17:58To have a courtyard garden here is quite something.
18:03The way that this corner just flies round, totally unsupported, you're performing structural gymnastics.
18:09Yes, and that's not all because this door and this glass all around the courtyard opens up so the kitchen effectively becomes part of the courtyard.
18:20And it's an ideal place for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
18:24So often you go into a house and you've got a corridor and three rooms or whatever.
18:31And I thought it would be very nice to have where you walk in and you see different aspects of the house as you walk through it.
18:40If downstairs is about the calm, practical day to day, the tower is where the fun happens, where guests get to enjoy the house in the first floor living room.
18:53This house is all about the entertaining.
18:56Yes, it is.
18:57And part of entertaining, of course, is theatre.
19:00Exactly.
19:01So you have the kitchen downstairs, you've got the movement through to the dining lounge.
19:04Exactly.
19:05And then drinks in the lounge upstairs.
19:07Or on a summer's evening, drinks on the terrace where the sun's shining.
19:10Mm-hmm.
19:11And you can have pre-dinner drinks out there or pre-dinner drinks out here.
19:15Mm-hmm.
19:16And post-dinner drinks out there or post-dinner drinks out there.
19:19There seem to be a lot of drinks, John.
19:22Well, there are a lot of corks downstairs, isn't there?
19:24There are.
19:28Entertaining here isn't an afterthought.
19:30It's the whole point.
19:33Like any star venue, it needs a grand entrance.
19:37Oh.
19:38They are enormous.
19:42So the architect, Ian Crane, gave it one.
19:45It's not even just the height.
19:47I mean, look at the width of these.
19:51I mean, how tall is this?
19:53Well, they're just under six metres high.
19:55Where do you even begin to get a piece of glass that size?
19:59There are only a couple of companies in the UK that can manufacture glass of this size and scale.
20:03And eventually, we've chose a company who are based in Turkey.
20:06So transporting these bits of glass across Europe was fraught with danger.
20:10Ultimately, the windows went in just before Christmas, and it was a bit like today, very windy.
20:15These large pieces of glass going in at a high level just the day before Christmas.
20:20One small thing on the side of the building, and then you lose a piece of glass, you'll be back to square one again.
20:25Mercifully, there were no breakages.
20:28What's really impressive about this house is the effortless ease with which it guides you around it from room to room.
20:37It's a place that encourages exploration and rewards you for doing it.
20:50Most houses are containers for the chaos in our lives, the stress and the pressure of work.
20:56But this house, well, this is very different.
21:01This steps in and it intervenes.
21:05From the moment you walk up the grand staircase to that beautiful brass door, this house takes over.
21:11The continuous lines of the brickwork guide you through.
21:15There you have options.
21:17Do you travel up to the tower and admire the views of the river?
21:21Or do you dwell in the serenity of this courtyard?
21:25At every single moment, this house steps in and slows your life down.
21:32And that's a very, very special thing.
21:36We've seen three houses so far that take you on holiday.
21:40And we have three more to see before we find out which will win a place on the shortlist.
21:47Water towers, lighthouses, old electricity substations.
21:56I mean, these are all building types which are ripe for conversion to residential use.
22:02Of course, the time-honored conversion is that of the humble agricultural barn.
22:08But what if you did a barn conversion which was minimal, which stripped out the interior,
22:15took it back to its raw, powerful, earthy barniness?
22:20I mean, that could be amazing, couldn't it?
22:24The only downside I can think of is that you'd end up living in a barn, like a cow.
22:30I'm in Essex to visit our next long lister.
22:39For a self-built project in a rural location, barn conversions make a lot of sense.
22:45First of all, you have a large open space that you can cut up as you see fit.
22:48Then the planning process is easier because there's already a structure there.
22:53And hopefully, the building itself will have lots of character that you can play with.
23:02Though all too often, that character is the first casualty of barn conversions.
23:07As the inside gets carved up to create as many rooms as possible.
23:12Not here though, not with this 18th century threshing barn.
23:17This is Jank's barn.
23:20A relic of rural life.
23:22Carefully conserved and elegantly reimagined.
23:27Inside this remarkable old structure, under the cathedral-like ceiling,
23:31there is a living space, kitchen area and dining space.
23:36And on top of a pulpit-like structure built within is a study.
23:40Off the main space, there are two separate bedrooms.
23:48It was commissioned by landscape designer, Jo.
23:51Hi Jo.
23:53Hi Natasha.
23:54Very nice to meet you.
23:55And you too. How are you?
23:56Very well, thank you.
23:58Oh, look at this place.
23:59It's just so welcoming.
24:01Oh.
24:04It had been used as a barn, we think, until the 60s and 70s.
24:09And then my neighbours, who sold the barn to me,
24:13they'd been here for 25 years,
24:15and they thought that they would one day do the barn themselves,
24:19but they didn't get round to it, and then they decided to sell.
24:22Pass the baton after you.
24:23Pass the baton to me.
24:24Exactly.
24:25And so when I first saw it, it was full of family stuff.
24:29Oh, goodness.
24:30It was their storeroom, bicycles, there was a rowing boat,
24:34chests of drawers, you name it, it was in there.
24:36When Joanne enlisted her architect, the brief was simple.
24:43Retain the barn's character.
24:46Do only what was necessary.
24:48Don't change anything unless you have to.
24:51The brief for me was to allow the barn to retain its agricultural feel.
24:57Is it okay for you to look inside?
24:59Absolutely.
25:00Come in.
25:03Oh, wow.
25:04Look at this.
25:08Step in and you're greeted by this breathtaking space.
25:12The original barn volume left intact.
25:15No mezzanines, no partitions, no white plasterboard.
25:19The judges were impressed by the care and conservation taken by all involved.
25:24I didn't want to put in a mezzanine floor.
25:28I didn't want to have anything that would interfere with the original structure.
25:33I wanted it to be left in its original huge volume because this is how it was built and how it has stayed for the last 250 years.
25:45So we've kept to the original division between what were lean-tos and what was the main threshing barn.
25:56There is a lot of respect for the historic structure here.
25:59So the new elements sit entirely apart from it.
26:01We introduced three black objects into the building.
26:08There's the study platform.
26:13There's the kitchen.
26:15And the wood-burning stove.
26:18But none of them touches the wall.
26:21So they're all freestanding.
26:23So the barn almost acts as the gallery to host these three pieces of sculpture.
26:28Yes, in a way.
26:30I think that the timber frame is like a work of art.
26:33Absolutely.
26:34And the star of the show.
26:36And is respected and loved and left in its original form.
26:41Well, most of it.
26:43You'd never know at first glance, but some of this ancient timber had to be replaced by the craft and expertise of one man.
26:49Dr. Joseph Bispham.
26:51I signed my indenture as a carpenter and joiner on the 23rd of June 1963.
26:56Oh, goodness.
26:58So I've been doing carpentry and joiners for quite a long time.
27:03We've lost so much of our history.
27:05And this is, in a way, fairly unique with Essex because they're not common, these field barns.
27:09And there was a time when it was a scrap it mentality, so everything would be knocked down.
27:16To repair the barn, Joseph carefully removes the rotten parts and then scarfs in new pieces.
27:24A scarf is an old piece of timber to a new piece.
27:27So if you look at that, then that's a scarf.
27:30A good example is this piece of oak here.
27:34So if that was a post and we were scarfing in, then that would be the tenon to hold on the plate.
27:40And that would be the running scarf that will go onto the existing piece of timber.
27:45So this is the replacement.
27:46This is the repair, right?
27:48Because you're looking at something that's rotted away at the bottom.
27:50So it's about minimal intervention, but it needs to stand the test of time.
27:56It's not just new timber that's scarfed in either.
27:59There you've used a salvaged piece.
28:02Yeah.
28:03So it's this mix of old, new, salvaged...
28:06Yes, I mean, where we could, we use every piece of timber.
28:09There's no bonfires here.
28:11Nothing, you know.
28:12So even small pieces of timber, they'll most probably have a job before the job is finished.
28:20The architects were Patrick Lynch and Rachel Elliott.
28:30There's something about the presence of old buildings that, like, you can just see the notches and the cuts and the workmanship.
28:37And so there's this friendly ghost. It's not alienating, but it's also a bit uncanny.
28:41The more you look at historic buildings and are able to read them, you know that there were phases in this building.
28:48We know that the mid-stray was cut in later.
28:51We know this wall had to be rebuilt in the 80s because there were cattle in here and they pushed the wall over.
28:58I mean, I find that really interesting and a great part of working on historic buildings.
29:01This is conservation, not by freezing time, but by working with what was there.
29:10Repairing it, honouring how it was made and allowing something new to emerge.
29:15This project is a careful restoration that finds beauty in the craft of what was once a purely functional building.
29:25By celebrating the work that went into making it and by adding a few sympathetic additions, this building has been given a new elegant life and become a beautiful home for Joanne.
29:37There is one British instinct which is deeply embedded, it's almost genetic, and that's the instinct to avoid making a fuss.
29:52And we queue quietly, we say sorry when we open the door for somebody else.
29:58Although we've never apologised for stealing the Elgin marbles.
30:01When it comes to design, of course, we also like our buildings to be a little modest, to be quieter, polite, something that knows its context and when to keep its voice down.
30:13But what if, what if that modesty was a mask?
30:17What if playing it down was how you got away with something much bigger, you know?
30:22What it takes is a little camouflage to smuggle in a bit of architectural daring.
30:27How daring?
30:28Well, our next longlister in Wales has pulled that trick off rather nicely.
30:34This is Kreuz Vach.
30:39Outside, you see local black mountain stone and a familiar barn-like form.
30:45Inside, it's got all the elegance and architectural drama of a Danish design gallery.
30:50The RIBA judges praised how highly crafted and well-built it was, inside and out.
30:58We wanted to try to develop something which is of now, which is contemporary, but not in such a way which is unduly insensitive or likely to be alienating to people.
31:11It sits into the slope with a raised drive that curves round the back of the house.
31:19You enter into a double-height hallway with an office and granny annex in one direction.
31:24Then, along the other corridor, there are five bedrooms and a family bathroom, with access to the garden.
31:32Heading upstairs, there's a TV room at one end with a playroom, toilets and utility rooms hidden along the back.
31:40All connected by a large kitchen living diner that opens onto the view.
31:47It was commissioned by Fernanda and Ben, who bought the plot with an existing house on it, hoping they might extend it slightly.
31:55Just making some changes in the rooms, making some room bigger, expanding some areas, modifying some other ones.
32:01At the same time, we were also multiplying the amount of children we had, so we were quickly realising we were running out of bedrooms.
32:09So, they decided to knock it down and build an upside-down house that took advantage of the view.
32:16Living space at the top, bedrooms on the bottom floor.
32:19Perfect if you're small, quick and prefer to start your day without adult supervision.
32:23We sleep on the bottom. We can open the door from our room, so we can just go, like, to play outside whenever we want, kind of.
32:34In the morning, I like to feed the chickens, because that's when they start. That's when they wake up.
32:40So, I feed the chickens at that time, so they start laying eggs.
32:46Then, they can head upstairs, where the grown-up architectural magic happens.
32:51You're not completely entitled to see the view until you actually reach the top of the stairs.
33:00Yeah, a proper bit of theatre once you get to the top.
33:04It doesn't reveal itself until the very end.
33:07I kind of like, wow!
33:11Yes, it is. A single open space, wrapped in glass, aimed straight at the Welsh mountains.
33:18Beautiful. But where's all the stuff?
33:24I can show you a secret, which is the favourite of the family.
33:28And it's this lather cupboard, which we designed to be able to hide all the little mess that we can create as a family.
33:37And once it's done, you close your docks back again, which are very easy, and then it'll all get hidden away.
33:46They've gone a step further than that. They've built a 15-metre wall in walnut to hide entire rooms.
33:54All the messy stuff off the back of the main living area, so things like the playroom, the water closet, the utility area, all of that's hidden away behind this main wall.
34:06This is a house that makes the best of its setting, with materials that help make it feel part of this magical place.
34:17We always say how lucky we are. You can't get bored, so it's just nice.
34:29We've seen five beautifully crafted homes so far. One more to go before we find out which have been shortlisted.
34:36I'm off to Suffolk to visit our next house on the longlist by a master architect and craftsman, and I've got a personal reason for visiting this one.
34:58Just down here there's a house by an architect who I have long admired, James Gorst.
35:09So, it's with a little trepidation that I approach, because I'm not expecting to be disappointed.
35:18I don't want to be disappointed.
35:20At the edge of a village here, where thatch and brick meet field and shed, sits something unexpected.
35:28Okay, here we are.
35:31Not a cottage, not a barn, but something else.
35:39I'm not sure I've come to the right building.
35:41I mean, this is just a wall.
35:44And a garage.
35:46Although, the garage is beautifully detailed, with a double roof and a chain pipe and a, oh, Douglas fur cladding.
35:59And the wall, the wall is L-shaped.
36:02And it is monumental!
36:05This is a Mento.
36:11Four timber pavilions stitched together by thick brick walls, as if they predate the buildings that lean against them.
36:20The Douglas fur interiors are crafted with the precision of a cabinet maker.
36:25Every joint, every line and surface calmly exact.
36:28The house is split into quadrants.
36:41One has the entrance hall with boot room and garage.
36:45The second quadrant has a snug and master bedroom.
36:48The third contains two bedrooms and a bathroom.
36:54And the fourth has the living and dining area with a kitchen.
37:01Hi!
37:02Hello!
37:03Sorry, I let myself in.
37:04Its owners are Liz and Peter.
37:07Very nice to meet you!
37:08And you, Liz.
37:09Yeah?
37:10Yes.
37:11Peter, how are you?
37:12I want to figure out the plan of it because it's got, it looks like a shed next to a great big wall. Is that right?
37:18Well, it's actually three walls.
37:19It's a broken cruciform.
37:21So, there were a series of sheds here that were run down and neglected for probably decades.
37:28And James Gorst was quick to pick up on that.
37:31See, anybody else would just say, I'll just do you a bunch of sheds.
37:33What James does is say, I'm going to do you a bunch of sheds on steroids with this great big monumental wall slicing through.
37:39So, what was your brief?
37:40Low maintenance, easy to clean.
37:43Calm.
37:44Single level living.
37:45We didn't want to use the B word, which was bungalow.
37:48But you might have used the B plural word, which is bungalows.
37:52That's much more attractive.
37:53Are we bungalows?
37:57The RIBA judges praised the confidence and craft in the building, noting particularly the sharpness of the brickwork.
38:05Two brothers built the walls.
38:07They did it themselves, 40,000 bricks.
38:09They're beautifully done.
38:10And same with our joiner.
38:12But when you look at the work, you can see that there was enjoyment in putting this house up.
38:16You can see it expressed in the craftsmanship.
38:18Inside, you walk along one of the great spine brick walls into the kitchen quarter of the house.
38:31The kitchen is then incorporated into the rest of the building.
38:33This is one large volume.
38:35And a giant celebration of one material.
38:38Douglas fir wood.
38:41Everything in the kitchen in Douglas fir.
38:44You've got Douglas fir cutlery.
38:47How far does it extend?
38:49We wanted to use the same material throughout to create an overall very calm palette.
38:58And so as you look through, everything is just seamless.
39:01Those mullions, those big posts are magnificent.
39:06They take the rhythms of the ceiling and they carry them into the floor.
39:10And wherever it's used, it's sort of, it's giving you a hug.
39:14And it's a huggable material.
39:16Even the brick feels softer here somehow.
39:22Outside, it looks like it's slicing the house into four neat chunks.
39:28But inside, you realize the walls don't divide.
39:32They invite you through.
39:34And what's through here? Through the, oh, Douglas fir door.
39:38A burst of color.
39:40Oh, so there is.
39:41The wall sharply separates the pale colors of the wood and brick from an ocean of blue.
39:49I'm beginning to see the walls as quite kind of powerful presences.
39:53When the kids, they're young adults now.
39:55When they come home, this is their private space.
39:58Yeah.
39:59What's very nice is that it does feel very adult.
40:02So it's not like returning to their old bedrooms and a family home with the posters on the wall.
40:06And they feel like they're regressing every time they come home.
40:11Part of the idea for the house came from the sheds that were here before.
40:16The rest came from the mind of its designer, James Gorst.
40:20The little fantasy I had in my head was that these walls represented the work of some previous civilization.
40:28And that a later date, people came along and thought, we can have these four quadrants and make them useful.
40:33And so these much more human scale mono pitches were fitted around.
40:40Although the business of actually building his vision was nerve wracking.
40:46When the house first went up, I had that terrible sinking feeling when you think you've just got something really wrong.
40:52When you came here and saw these expletive deleted walls, it just looked so massive and gaunt.
41:01And I did think, what the hell have I done here?
41:04But it's okay now.
41:05And that's the nature of architecture.
41:08You know, often you are being a bit brave with scale and initially it can be a bit concerning.
41:14Who dares wins.
41:16It's always a worry meeting your heroes, but Amento does not disappoint.
41:21You can use brick and timber to do a job, hold up a roof, clad a wall.
41:28But as the architect Louis Kahn said, even a brick wants to be something more.
41:36It takes a real master of their craft, somebody like James Gorst, to take these materials and make them sing.
41:46I mean, really sing, to write a song for them, which speaks of their hopes and their memories.
41:59We've explored six remarkable homes, but which will make the shortlist?
42:07Mill hide, brutal corten on the outside, butter smooth limestone within.
42:13Cast Corbel House, a suburban semi with big ambitions, a brick-built piece of architectural chutzpah.
42:25Lower Ham, part riverside folly, part Tuscan daydream.
42:30There's a brass front door, a tower, and just enough restraint to stop it becoming a bomb set.
42:35Jank's Barn, the glorious timber-framed relic brought back from the brink.
42:44Creus Wach, a Welsh farmhouse for the 21st century that hugs the hillside and embraces the view.
42:51And Amento, so minimal it's practically monastic.
42:56Just air, light and the quiet confidence of a building that's reached enlightenment.
43:05On the jury is Livia Wang.
43:08So how many projects from this category have you shortlisted?
43:13Two.
43:14Two. What's your first?
43:15Amento.
43:16Amento.
43:17There was so much potential for these two different types of material languages in terms of how they meet,
43:23but also what the gardens were doing in each section of the site that had just been divided up.
43:27How successful do you think it was for its rigour and thoroughness?
43:31I mean, I think the thing that's really successful about this building is the use of materials and how finely it's all been detailed.
43:39That's wonderful news!
43:42Gosh, that's really good.
43:45Very, very pleased to hear that.
43:47So you've got a second project you've shortlisted in this category. What is it?
43:50Jank's Barn.
43:51Right. That's surprising for me because it's a very, very historical building.
43:58So much of it is about conservation.
44:00Oh, but the way they did it, every single beam, every single little purlin, even the little pieces of wood holding it all together were just cared for so well.
44:11It's an essay and loving the original barn.
44:15And that's not what every single conservation project is about.
44:17This is not a bog-stranded barn conversion. This is one that really makes you think everyone knows every single piece of wood.
44:27That's great. Absolutely thrilled.
44:30So, Jank's Barn and Amento take their place on the shortlist alongside Hastings House, Kirk and the Crake and Triangle House.
44:41We have just two more places on the shortlist before we find out who will be crowned House of the Year 2025.
44:51Good homes, and I mean really good homes. They don't try to be anything they're not. They're quietly confident, singular, unmistakably themselves.
45:04Judy Garland said, be a first-rate version of yourself and never a second-rate version of somebody else.
45:10That's what these homes do. They follow no template. They chase no trend. They're built with courage and conviction and they are pure expressions of the people who dared to imagine them and the people then who made them real.
45:25And that to me, that is an absolute mark of beauty.
45:32Next time, we'll explore houses which are extraordinary transformations.
45:38It's so lush.
45:40Six more homes that challenge the way we live.
45:44Oh my word, it's stunning.
45:46And we'll discover the RIBA House of the Year winner.
45:52This project has been ambitious on so many levels.
45:541
45:55session
45:577
45:59and
46:022
46:12so
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