Looks like an inside job...
SHOW TIME: It’s a show home but not as we know it thanks to a band of architects who have turned developers. Sharon Dale reports
T’S not often you view a show home and feel like you’ve stumbled into an episode of Grand Designs.
Even Kevin McCloud, who has seen it all, would be drooling over the internal windows, the natural light, the high decorative ceilings, stepped levels, the finish and the millimetre perfect symmetry at number 8 Delamere Gardens.
It’s clear that the architects have been given free rein here. They’ve been let loose without constraint and the result is astounding.
Yet this case of architectural omnipotence is rare in new housing developments, where design is compromised by cost and indifference. It was only made possible when the architects from One 17 in Huddersfield decided to turn developers.
Mark Lee, a director at One 17, says: “If we work for developers our job is just to do the basic permission plans, then they take over. We wanted to bring good design to speculative housing and we think what we have done here is somewhere between a speculative build and a one-off house.”
They bought the land in Fixby, Huddersfield, in 2010 and got planning permission for 13 detached homes, whose exteriors are surprisingly traditional.
“The interiors are contemporary and that’s what people want but I think it would’ve been too risky to make the exterior contemporary. What we find is that people glance at the outside then walk in so it is far less important to them than we thought it would be,” says Mark.
The £1.285m show home has five double bedrooms, all with en-suite, and you enter through a double height hallway. To the left is a breakfast kitchen, utility room and a sitting room. It’s a semi open-plan arrangement although spaces are clearly defined thanks to partial walls and stepped levels.
“It would’ve been cheaper to have everything on one level but that would have destroyed everything we are about,” says Mark.
There are also steps down from the hall into a second sitting room with a raised library area at the back. Building regulations stipulated a balustrade for the stairs which “would not have looked good”, so the One 17 team has created
We didn’t realise how difficult it can be to deliver this level of quality