Apple guru creates Cotswolds uproar over ‘private fortress’
HE’S the design genius who brought you the iPad and iMac, earning himself a £200 million fortune — and a knighthood — in the process.
So it’s scarcely surprising that, when contemplating alterations to the Cotswolds mansion he snapped up last year for £17 million, Sir Jony Ive should have hired Foster + Partners, the architectural practice established by Lord (Norman) Foster.
What could possibly go wrong? Well, almost everything, it seems, judging by the derision that has greeted the resultant proposals. These seek permission for numerous internal changes to the Grade I-listed house, dating from 1590, as well as the demolition of a tower and various 20th- century buildings and the erasure of a tennis court and outdoor riding school.
‘The purchase of a great house comes with great responsibility — it is not a play thing,’ one local points out, before denouncing plans for a new studio and orangery as ‘lazy’ and ‘pretentious’, and adding, of a proposed service area: ‘The insensitivity is breathtaking.’
Sir Jony, who designed the emblem for King Charles’s coronation, and his architects, who take care to state that their plans have involved ‘detailed discussions with Cotswold District Council and Historic England’, are then lambasted for proposing to raise the height of the walls separating the house from the village.
‘The listed walls must not be tampered with,’ warns an objector, who accuses Ive, 56, of seeking to turn the house ‘into a private fortress’.
Other comments describe various aspects of the plans as ‘disingenuous’, ‘beyond ludicrous’, ‘unacceptable’ and lacking any public benefit. A proposal to install a generator inspires particular scorn and suspicion. But one proposal
provokes more fury than all the others — Ive’s desire for an underground car park. It’s described by one objector as a ‘ridiculous vanity structure’ — a theme taken up by others, one of whom points out that its construction will necessitate the extraction of between 6,000 and 7,000 tons of clay, all to satisfy ‘the whim of one man’.
The consequences for the surrounding single-track roads will, argue several locals, destroy grass verges and cause endless delays — with work envisaged as taking three years to complete. ‘The application needs more thought. It should be refused and re-submitted,’ says one particularly dogged critic.
It’s quite a prospect. The current application, which is awaiting the council’s verdict, has generated 293 documents, many of them of 30 pages or more.
Sir Jony, who now puts his talents at the disposal of Ferrari, can perhaps take heart from one detail: no one has objected to his proposal for a swimming pool. Foster + Partners declined to comment.