Frog Hole Farm - A Grade II Listed farmhouse in rural Kent.
The design is a contemporary extension that reacts to its immediate characteristic context, referencing the past without replicating it and being true to the time in which it is built. The physical relationship to the existing building was considered paramount to the development of the design. The design strategy was to avoid the appearance of an ad hoc extension which would be unlikely to dissolve in to the composition, but to create a clear definition between old and new, each throwing the other in to a greater dramatic prominence.
In order to inscribe the proposed into the existing context the following strategies where employed:
Clear cut lines and a flat roof for the proposed serve to emphasise more dramatically, the strong gable forms and protrusions that are so inherently characteristic of the existing.
Large areas of glazing where required on all 3 elevations to ensure that the existing elevation was visibly through the new when viewed from all angles, with solid elements contained within the core.
Particular care was taken to ensure the glazing was strategically placed at the junctions between the old and new so there would be a light touch with the existing, serving to distinguish between old and new. The glazing is also in servitude to the surrounding landscape. Generous sliding doors & glazed units, frame specific views and the landscape is not seen as a separate element through a small window with interior and exterior clearly defined, but brought into the kitchen as an integral part of the composition.