DUNCRAIG | Williams Burton Leopardi

A beautiful but cold and austere 1890’s stone manor house was all formal faded elegance but no modern amenity. Family functionality was relegated to the former service areas of bygone eras – an old style kitchen and former living areas for previously required house staff, whilst the grand formal rooms festered in dusty unused neglect.

The crux of this renovation was to bring life and modern sensitivity to the house. A home for a new age that enabled the grandeur and ceremony into the everyday, whilst providing for a more casual and relaxed sensibility.

As a practice where architecture and interiors are viewed as a whole, step one is always to step back and assess the big picture in terms of flow and connectivity. Telling the story of the house and enabling a narrative that makes it relevant for the next century is a critical factor

The other and arguably most important aspect of our philosophy on all projects is that no matter how perfectly planned or meticulously detailed a space is, this means nothing if our client is not engaged and in love with the end result. Understanding who or clients are and what they wish their home to say about them, gives us the best chance to deliver on this.

The kitchen was relocated literally into the heart of the home by inserting an infill addition into what was a dark and unused courtyard between 2 wings of the house. This space previously backed onto a beloved ‘inglenook’ (warming room) which was completely dismantled during construction with the chimney portion individually numbered and reassembled and adapted as a double fireplace. The newly reformed fireplace brought a direct connection from the kitchen to the previously rarely used formal living and dining spaces now enlivened with everyday family life.

The kitchen was conceived as a light filled, clean, contemporary “country kitchen” responding to the existing structure, materials and history of the building, whose previously external stone walls now form a backdrop to the soft new materials palette. Respecting the story of the house was vitally important to our client and of course us and through materials, colour and lightness of touch, a sophisticated and elegant, but accessible casual intimacy is now the pervading feel where once only faded formalism existed.