How and why we have pulled such talent together

Down at Lower Mill, there was already a 'landmark building', in the form of the existing listed Mill. Right from the start it was clear that in order to avoid the proposed plan looking like the archetypal housing estate, some house designs would have to take on a similar role to that of the Mill building. The converted Howell's Barn was already just such a 'landmark house', whilst Somerford Villa, which stands in the water at the edge of a narrow peninsular jutting out into Somerford Lagoon, was the first of the new houses to be designed specifically as a 'landmark house' for one of our clients.

These houses are the equivalent, architecturally, of what the limestone mansion or vicarage was in relation to the houses of the vernacular tradition. For the 'Landmark House' programme, we have 22 architects and a total of 48 'landmark houses' to design. Unlike the other house types with their pitch, monopitch and mansarded roofs, and similar building genre, the 'landmark houses' will generally be more distinct architecturally - sometimes with a flat roof or with a roof terrace, more elaborate use of decking, sometimes of a 'grander scale' but all with a greater concern for spatial and sculptural elaboration and poetical sensibilities, etc.

The standard types we have provided for Lower Mill Estate are our 'vernacular' or 'common' buildings for the site and, as such, have a shared building language - the codes, or rules, if you like. Such building is definable and specifiable. 'Architecture', by its very nature, is more allusive. For the architecture of the 'landmark houses', what rules there are, are those to be provided by each individual architect. But it is the building, or vernacular of the development, at Lower Mill, that provides the 'framework' or setting for the 'architecture' and, in a sense, makes the 'architecture' possible.