Old browser alert!

We have detected you are using a pretty old browser. This website along with other modern websites on the web uses cool features that can't be supported by your browser, not to mention the security vulnerabilities.

If we let you see the website it would look all weird and broken, nobody wants that!

Go on - update your browser!

Owers House

Sitting on the banks of the Fal Estuary, the site faces west with views south towards the sea. Immediately below the site lies the Grade II listed house ‘Creek Vean’ designed by Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, then practicing as ‘Team 4’. Built in 1966 it is one of the finest houses built in the 1960s in England. The presence of such an important modernist house immediately below the site sets a very high standard indeed.
Our design takes a cue from Creek Vean in splitting the house into two distinct elements – a bedroom/study wing that sits along the contours, and a living wing that runs against the slope. A bridge provides access into glazed hallway between these two forms. The living room wing projects out into the site in a dramatic cantilever above the dropping site - so that the living room gains fabulous views out across the estuary.

From the lane, the house appears as slightly mysterious with ‘blank’ walls and a bridge inviting entrance into a glazed atrium (a solid front door prevents the immediate view until opened). The walls are clad in an almost black, timber cladding, heightening the sense of mystery and evoking traditional tarred Cornish fishermen’s buildings.

To the southern side, a two-storey high wing contains bedrooms and study spaces, lit from a high level clerestorey to the north. Bedrooms are fully glazed and set back beneath an over-sailing roof offering solar shading, while balconies shade the lower floor rooms. From the west, the upper timber level sits atop a chalky brick base to appear to ‘float’.

To the northern side, a flat roofed living room wing project out dramatically above the dropping site, so that the living room gains fabulous views out across the estuary. The deep roof overhangs also prevents any glare when viewed from the estuary or from across the Creek.

A chimney – the epitome of home and Englishness – impales the living wing and creates a BBQ space on the sheltered terrace below.

The house has solar panels set flat on the living wing roof driving an air source heat pump provides heating.

Client Paul & Helen Owers
Status Completed (2013)
Contract value £655,000
GIA m2 282 m2
Structural engineer Momentum
Ecology Spalding Associated (Environmental) Ltd.
Contractor P Chapman Construction
Quantity surveyor Ed Crossley & Associates
Arboriculturalist Treewise
Sustainability Consultant Stuart Thomas
Photography © James Morris

RIBA South-West Award 2016
RIBA 'House of the Year' Longlist 2016
Cornish Building Awards 2015; Commendation

Last project Next project