Grand Designs (1999–…): Season 2, Episode 7 - The Jewel Box, London - full transcript
I want to live here now.
It'll be the longest ten weeks in history,
because you want it to happen.
Nobody, when they see
this final thing, will expect it of us.
London is currently being overwhelmed by a
mass outbreak of modern millennium building
that is transforming the capital.
Wherever we live, most of us in Britain
know and probably admire one local piece
of avant-garde public architecture.
But how would you feel if a high-tech
building suddenly sprang up in your street,
or for that matter,
is it your idea of a dream home?
Well, it's certainly a long-held dream
of the couple I'm meeting this week,
Sarah and Coneyl.
We've been looking for somewhere
for about three years
that we could move
into, possibly convert,
change, make into a
live-work space, whatever.
But we just couldn't find anything,
so I was talking to some architects
who came to the conclusion
we could build somewhere.
It seemed far-fetched
at the beginning, but
at the end, it seemed
like the logical idea,
so, for better or worse,
we took the plunge.
Both Coneyl and I live for the moment,
live for now,
and so it seems to be absolutely perfect
that we're creating a house
that will be a 21st Century house.
They're no strangers to modem design.
Sarah Jordan makes
award-winning contemporary jewellery,
and Coneyl Jay is a freelance photographer.
They want to live in a
unique, modern space
that will also accommodate
their businesses.
What we do anyway in our working
life, we always create new things,
so it just seems like one step further
to create a house,
an environment for us to live in
which is something totally and utterly new.
It's a challenge. A massive challenge.
To build their 21st Century dream,
they've employed architect Mike Tonkin.
Coneyl and Sarah have been a jeweller
and a photographer.
That was the key for us,
and we said that, um...
jewellery's about being looked at,
and attracting attention,
and photography's about looking,
so they're very nice... nicely opposed,
so we said, "Let's just make
two buildings that look at each other."
What are you putting into this building
which is jewel-like and is photographic?
We've taken the house, and we've
said the house is like a jewel box.
And the jewels are the objects in the house
that you live with,
so the bath becomes a
jewel for washing in, and
the kitchen becomes a
jewel that you cook at,
and each of the jewels have lights in
that light up.
The studio we've actually made
into a camera obscura,
and it's working
like a very, very large pinhole camera.
It's dark inside, it has
a blackout blind that
comes down, and it'll
have a small pinhole.
A little hole in the blackout blind?
And that will project an image of what?
It'll project an image of the house
upside-down on the back of the studio.
- This is all in theory?
- In theory, yeah.
Have you done
this kind of domestic build before?
We've not done a new
build before, so, um...
So, this is your first
complete new build?
Our first new building, yes.
The design is for two buildings -
a double-height studio, and a house -
that face each other
across a sunken water garden.
This whole design is
about the play of light.
Vast glass walls flood the
open-plan interior with sunlight,
while the kitchen units have lighting
built into them so they glow in the dark.
Upstairs, on a mezzanine floor,
the master bedroom
and bathroom also feature
custom-made furniture
with built-in lighting.
The house looks out
across the flooded courtyard
to the double-height studio
at the opposite end of the site.
A sheltered walkway on the left
connects the two buildings,
while on the right,
there's a long, glass-walled wing
containing bedrooms and Sarah's workshop,
leading through
to photographer ConeyFs studio.
Taking advantage of
the tong, tapering site,
the studio will behave
like a huge pinhole camera.
When the specially designed blinds
are lowered, an image of the house
will project itself onto the studio walls.
They plan to use lots
of newly-developed
materials, and cutting-edge
building methods,
yet the frame of this
very contemporary design
will be built from the
most ancient of materials -
wood.
But it'll be given an
original finish, with a
coating of white render
mixed with glass beads.
This way, the whole building
will sparkle inside and out.
Where else is this starkly contemporary
piece of architecture being built
but in a quiet residential
street in North London.
- Hello.
- Hello.
- How are you?
- Very well.
I have to say, this place is not easy
to find. It's kind of really tucked away.
What did the place used to be?
Is it garages?
- It's the old mechanics workshop.
- Really?
- These garages along here?
- Lock-up garages.
Yeah?
The whole site? Which is quite large.
How's it going to work?
I mean, because it's
an extremely long,
narrow position, isn't it?
The site is very thin.
We're sort of planning
on moving a lot of the
living accommodation
to the right-hand side,
having bedrooms on
the right-hand side here.
At the front here,
we're going to build
an absolutely outstanding glittery box,
and then to have the working
at the rear of the site.
So, it's going to be
a long, thin building?
Yeah, with a sort of
garden in the centre.
It's definitely not going to be
one of your pointy-roofed houses.
Show me the back here.
This was the garage, was it?
I'm sure the local planners have views
on Coneyl and Sarah's modern design.
Getting permission to build any new house
is never straightforward.
A good start is to buy a plot
that already has planning permission,
or find a plot with a derelict house
that can be replaced.
But Coneyl and Sarah
are taking a different approach.
So, has it gone through relatively swiftly?
We're still waiting to get the
final piece of paper at the moment.
You haven't actually
got planning permission?
We had no idea we
could get permission.
That's breaking the first golden rule.
- When did you put in the application?
- July last year.
- July '99.
- That's... 11 months.
We just believed in what we wanted to do.
We risked everything by buying the site
without planning permission.
Either we risked losing
the land, or we got the
land, and risked not
getting planning permission.
Risking the planning permission
is a much better risk, I think,
than risk trying to find this again.
- We're never going to find this again.
- Yeah.
But the fact that you
haven't got the paper,
does that imply you'll
receive the paper soon,
or could it be another 11 months?
We do believe
that the planners will come through.
But it's the one pan of the process
where you cannot really force the issue.
You have to go with the speed and the pace
at which they work at.
Basically, they've got our
head in the noose. If they say no,
then... we stop.
It's the end.
Coneyl and Sarah have gone and bought a
piece of land with no planning permission,
so are they mad, or just naive?
Well, in fact, theirs is
quite a well-calculated risk,
because the site already
has a building on it,
albeit one which is derelict,
disused and light industrial.
It's squeezed in between houses and shops,
so the chances are the planners are going
to want to change its use to residential.
Having said that, I just don't know
if they'll buy the avant-garde design
in what is such a polite Edwardian street.
A nail-biting year after first
applying for planning permission,
the architect Mike gets a response.
Oh, actually, I should
have given you this before.
Oh, my God! I don't believe it!
I don't believe it!
Cheers.
Here's to the Planning Department.
I think we're probably
the most happy people
in the whole of North
London at the moment.
It's been one absolutely amazing day.
Incredibly busy, and the best news
that you could possibly have ever had.
Very unexpected. I mean,
I think we waited a long while for it,
and... it was worth the patience,
and it was worth keeping cool.
They're all up for some modern design.
To be honest,
it seems almost unreal that we've got it.
We've stopped ourselves
getting excited for so long,
because until you've actually got
this piece of paper
that we've been talking
about for so long as well,
it's like, "Can it really be true?"
We can actually, actually do
this most dream-like thing.
To pay for the new build, Coneyl
and Sarah are selling the family home
that Coneyl's lived in his whole life.
They're renting a flat nearby
for the duration of the build.
It's all go now. Everything
else has kind of fallen into place.
The house is ready for sale,
we've found a flat to move to.
That's it. It's a green light, really.
It's a major day,
it's a really, really big day.
It is like the first day of
the rest of the life, really.
Some sentimental attachments
to memories here, which is obvious,
but it's kind of outweighed
by the excitement of
this is one step closer
to what we're trying to do.
We can sign off the past now, and
go to the future with no fears whatsoever.
Coneyt and Sarah are hoping
to start on site in two weeks.
They're using every inch of their land by
building right up to the edge of this site,
but in a built-up area like this,
that means a tot of neighbours,
and a lot of time-consuming negotiations.
Two weeks turned into two months,
but Mike's confident that once they
get started, it will be a fast-track build.
Now we've got the contractor appointed,
and we start on site,
it's 21 weeks' construction time.
It's a fast programme we're working to,
but all of the techniques we're using,
and the construction methods
mean we should be able
to produce the building on time.
Like the architect, the
main building contractors
have never built
anything like this before,
but they're showing the same confidence.
- So, Bob, you're running this job?
- I am.
The build is 20 weeks, plus you've got
a week off at Christmas, haven't you?
- That's right.
- So, is that doable?
Oh, yeah, it's easily doable.
It's probably a little bit...
a little bit more than we need.
- A little bit generous?
- In places.
Quid pro quo,
you think you'll be in...
more or less on schedule?
We'll be on schedule, yes.
I'm really curious to see
if a house can be built in 20 weeks,
let alone an ambitious piece
of modem architecture.
Work finally begins on site
with the demolition of the old garages.
The fast-track build
starts out at a snail's pace.
It's not really a demolition.
It's more of a dismantling,
because the buildings have to be taken down
very carefully.
We're surrounded by about nine neighbours,
and obviously don't want anything
that we do to affect their business,
their home, or whatever.
Demolition may go slower than expected,
but after waiting two years,
Coney! and Sarah aren't complaining.
Today they started taking off
the old garage doors,
and slowly knocking down, all by hand.
Things are happening. It's moving.
It's like a running
elephant. You can't stop it.
But it's exciting and
scary in equal measures
because suddenly it's
becoming a real thing.
It's like when we first decided we were
going to build and design our own house.
We were really, really excited then,
and then in between
there's been tons of hassle,
and now we've come out the other end.
It is actually being built for us,
and that is just really exciting.
To make this a record-breaking fast build,
Mike's using a series
of technical innovations,
some of which have never been used
in a domestic build,
like the steel micropiles
he's using as foundations.
Most houses are built
on concrete-filled trenches,
but here, the entire building
will be raised completely off the ground
on hollow steel rods.
The micropiles are drilled
six metres into the ground.
Cement slurry is then pumped through them
into the earth below,
where it spreads and
sets to form a solid base.
Now, Bob, these big
galvanised brackets here
are going to carry the main beams
of the floor, aren't they, of the building?
The whole building sits on these.
Sits on these. The primary supports
running the full length of the building.
Blimey.
- So, how many are there?
- There are 83.
- Blimey, that's a lot, isn't it?
- It is.
And what's it used for?
It's normally used for
embankment stabilisation
where an embankment...
With Railtrack's floods,
they've lost a lot of embankment.
This sort of thing will
stitch it all together.
You stitch it together,
fill it with concrete,
and stop the bank
from slipping down.
But this is an
entirely different use,
because this is taking
weight in compression.
It is, but in compression
it's actually a
little bit better than it
would be in tension.
- It's a kind of wonderful new use for it.
- A new use for it.
And it's so much quicker
than conventional foundations.
I'm just amazed no
one's thought of it before.
In his quest for speed, Mike's not afraid
to use mass-market construction methods.
He's having the framework of the house
manufactured off-site in a timber factory.
They'll prefabricate all
the timber panels here.
The details we did
will make the package
quite straightforward
to put together on site.
All the thinking of it will have been done
at this end before we hit the site,
and we're probably going to be looking at
a time span of two and a half weeks,
hopefully, on site,
getting the superstructure up.
Once on site, the
panels wilt just have to
be bolted together like
a giant Meccano set,
and as such, construction
should be child's play.
This is a 20-week build, which is very
tight. There's not much room for manoeuvre.
They're six weeks in, and they're
already a week and a half behind.
But today is the day that the timber frame
arrives, which means that within two weeks
Sarah and Coneyl should have
the skeleton of their new house.
The first delivery from the factory
is the floor panels.
These are simply bolted onto wooden beams
that sit on top of the micropiles.
The builders get off to a flying start,
and it doesn't take long to map out
the footprint of the house.
- Pleased with what you have so far?
- It's great seeing it take shape
after it's all been discussions
and talks and papers, and faxes, and...
We went away,
and there was just the drains here,
and we came back, and they
started to put the whole floor plan,
and the piles, so you could sort of see
the space, and where the rooms were going,
and that was pretty amazing.
You got a real sense of how... the whole
size and perspective, and everything.
And now this is up, you get an indication
of the size of the courtyard,
and the walkway, and the rooms.
It's the real thing,
I want to put my sleeping bag down,
and come down now, and...
I want to live here now,
that's the thing, isn't it?
It'll be the longest 10 or 12 weeks in
history, because you want it to happen.
Ten weeks may seem a long time to them,
but when you're making a building,
time can pass all too quickly.
This is the cloister that connects
Coneyl and Sarah's jewel house at the front
with their photography studio at the back.
Now, according to the schedule, all the
timberwork on the site should now be up.
Unfortunately, neither the house
nor the studio have even been started.
They're three weeks behind, and
they're on a 20-week fast-track schedule,
so what I want to know is, how are
they going to make up the difference?
So, Mike, you're
already two and a half,
nearly three weeks
late on it, so why is that?
I mean, it's happened
for a couple of reasons.
The, um, the pile
caps didn't get
galvanised, which is
a sort of silly mistake.
- You spec'd them as being galvanised?
- Yes.
So they had to go in a queue
to be galvanised in a galvanising bath.
- It's somebody forgetting?
- Somebody forgot.
The building process is thousands of people
making decisions,
and it just needs one person in that chain
to somehow get it wrong,
and the whole apple can sort of tipped.
- Yeah.
- And that's what's happened to us here.
And then we're having a few problems
with the timber frame.
And most of it should have been here now.
There are loads of panels here,
but they are not the right ones?
These are the roof
panels. They built the
roof panels first because
that's the easy bit.
The tricky details are on the wall panels,
and so they'll be building those...
You'd think they'd build the wall
panels first, so you would put them up...
You'd put them up first.
You'd want to put the floor down,
and then the walls,
and the roof goes on last.
The building's simple,
but some of the joints are complicated,
because although the building
is just two boxes looking at each other,
when it's finished, it'll be very seamless.
A lot of the complexity
is inside the joints, so
a lot of the clever
structural work is hidden.
Now, you chose the joinery company because
they came with the best quote, I guess.
They were relatively cheap.
Yeah, they had the best price, yeah.
Yeah. Do you think, on reflection,
perhaps they might not quite be up to it?
It's just... But it's not
like a regular house.
Is it something quite
ambitious for them?
I think so, and maybe
it's quite complicated.
Building always takes a long time.
I think Alvar Aalto said,
"If you want a building,
you can have it quickly.
If you want architecture,
you have to wait."
That's not good news
for a fast-track build.
The first batch of wall panels
arrive in the New Year,
and the framework can start to go up.
There's nothing revolutionary
about timber-frame houses,
but the way this house is being
put together is far from ordinary.
Conventional timber-panelled houses
rely on a skin of plywood,
and a frame of thick, chunky soft wood.
Now, when these are nailed together,
you're always going to get
a degree of movement between the two,
so how do builders get over that?
Well, what they do is,
they stick loads and loads of nails in.
They use really solid,
thick, chunky timbers,
they use loads of them, and then they
put internal partition walls in your house
which help brace the whole structure.
But Coneyl and Sarah don't want lots
of internal walls breaking up their space.
They want a big, open-plan house.
And so to help them, the architect
and the engineer have gone right back
to basic engineering principles, and
they've designed a system of timber-framing
that nobody's ever used before.
They're using a glue which performs
rather like welding does on steel.
It forms a really tight bond
between two pieces of metal,
just as the glue forms a
really tight, intimate joint
between a piece of plywood,
and the soft wood on it.
And the result of that is,
there's absolutely no flex in it at all.
But at the sub-zero temperatures
of early January,
the glue isn't drying, and the builders
are constantly having to reset the timber.
On top of that,
a lot of the panels are having to be...
um, tweaked on site to get them to fit.
I've been working on timber frame
for about 12 years now,
and this is... I've never done
a timber-frame house like this before
in the 12 years I've worked.
It's, um... very complex.
There's a lot of gluing, a lot of bolting,
a lot of rebates.
And it's just... different
than we've ever done before.
It's not really going
quite as smoothly as planned.
Prefabricating the frame in a factory
was meant to save time on site.
I think, basically, they just maybe
overlooked how much work was involved,
you know, in this building, cos a typical
timber frame - what I call a timber frame -
would basically have been finished
in anything from seven, ten days.
As it is, assembling this framework
has taken three weeks,
and they're not even halfway.
Coneyl and Sarah return in February
from a business trip,
hoping to find their house up.
We've just got back from Japan,
and we went to the site on the Sunday
when we got back in the evening,
and we were expecting
to see the rest of the timber frame up,
and we thought,
"Mm... Looks as if
something's gone a little bit wrong here."
After a handful of pretty usual delays,
an act of God brings
an unmitigated disaster.
There's been a fire in
the timber frame factory.
They've lost their
machinery, tools, and all
the detailed drawings
to make the panels.
I was woken up
about five past one on a Saturday morning,
and, um, basically we were informed
that the workshop was on fire.
We didn't really know what to expect
other than the fact that we could see a big
chimney effect of flame and steam rising
on the horizon sort of thing,
and realised as we got nearer
that it was our workshop that was going.
It's wiped out all of the
manufacturing facility,
and obviously,
the follow-on from that has been
that we can't get the stuff onto site
when it should have been.
With the schedule now
spiralling out of control,
Mike calls an emergency meeting.
So, to fill you in a bit more
with the news on the fire...
We've lost some
time, but it's obviously
caused a sort of complete
hiccup in the system.
The fire throws the
schedule completely out,
and Mike's given up all hope
of making up lost time.
They're now looking at running a
minimum of four weeks over their programme.
Al least Coneyl and Sarah
won't suffer financially.
They've been smart enough to negotiate
a fixed-price deal with their contractors,
which means they've
agreed a total price for
the build, regardless
of how long it takes.
In one respect, it doesn't really matter,
because we're not dependent on having
to move into the house on a certain date,
but the other side, it's
incredibly frustrating,
because we really
want to be there now.
Even with a few
weeks' delay, it's still a
quick build compared
to a traditional build.
So, that's still a
good thing, but it's
frustrating, because you
still want to be in there,
you know, and the
sooner the better, really.
The factory pulls out all the stops,
and manages to deliver the remaining panels
an amazing ten days after the fire.
White the timber frame contractors
finish off the house frame,
the roofers are making a start on
the studio, and the covered walkway.
Mike's chosen another innovative technique
to use on the roof -
a flat, waterproof membrane.
This is made up of a vapour barrier
that's heat-sealed to the timber roof.
Once that layer is cooled,
insulation is sandwiched between it
and a final waterproofing surface.
This kind of membrane roofing is more often
used on big loud get commercial projects,
but Mike's keen to use a top-end product
instead of the cheaper option
of roofing felt or tiles
to guarantee that on
a totally flat roof like
this, the surface will
be 100% waterproof.
It's another example
of how Mike's borrowing
methods and products
from commercial building.
It's tactics like this that'll
make his design unique.
This build seems to
push all the boundaries
in terms of its design
and its construction.
For example, down here,
these steel and concrete micropiles
which normally are used
to reinforce motorway embankments,
but which here are supporting...
the whole building.
And the surprisingly
thin roof panel section
which relies on glue rather than
masses of timber for its strength.
And the reflective concrete render which is
going to be made with little glass beads.
Now, each of these ideas
may seem risky and experimental,
but in fact, they're all
proven in their own areas.
If Mike's taking a risk here at all,
it's in bringing these different
technologies together in one house.
But I think that's a risk
worth taking, because the
result is going to be a
very interesting building.
It may look like
the building's just starting to go up,
but it's enough to give Coneyl and Sarah
a glimpse of their new home.
So, is this space working out
as you thought it would?
I think it's working out better
than we thought it would.
When you see the model,
you imagine things being small,
but if you're actually standing here,
you can get a real feeling
of the double-height void that'll be here,
and the whole width of the lounge.
I was quite sort of worried that the rooms
were going to seem too small over there,
but when you're standing
in it, it seems like...
It starts to create its own little world.
It's really interesting.
It makes me think we're probably never
going to leave once we get in.
So, now you can see the structure coming
along, how are you planning the interiors?
What will they look like?
Very simple, basically.
Trying to make
something that's going
to last, be hard-wearing,
and will look better the more it gets worn.
I suppose it's like a sort
of interpretation of places
that we've always been really happy
and felt at home with.
Some of the old temples in Japan.
Yeah.
The idea of a courtyard,
and a very calm space in the centre,
and then the rooms around the outside.
So, will it in any way
look, then, Japanese?
Will it have an Oriental quality?
I think it'll have the calmness you feel,
the sereneness of being in...
The idea of a courtyard
is definitely a Japanese story,
and there are definitely themes,
elements and flavours,
but it's not strictly trying
to copy something else.
If you've got a kind of clean slate
to start building,
you might as well go for
your sort of wildest ideas, you know.
Coneyi and Sarah are both
frequent visitors to Japan for their work,
and it's obviously an important
source of inspiration for them.
I went with them to look around
a brand-new bar in London
that has a Japanese design, to get a better
understanding of the took they're planning.
Listening to how you describe your place,
I'd have thought there's quite a lot of...
those elements in this bar, no?
I mean, soft-coloured materials,
wood, that kind of thing.
I mean, the textures, and the feel, and
the look does have a sort of similarity,
but our interpretation
is completely different.
It's much simpler.
The finishes and detailing
are more decorative than what we'll have.
I think we've pared things down.
There's similar influences here.
There is a similar palette.
There's a darkness to it
that will be appropriate
to the colours we're using.
So, natural materials,
self-coloured materials...
- Simple.
- Yeah.
But there is an ambience here
which I think is quite interesting.
Sort of large areas of
light. You're not aware
of any specific specular
sort of lights either.
So, there's no harsh glare,
no obvious light sources. It's a gentle...
The studio will be dark,
but the living area will be quite light,
so it should be a lot
more open, but it will vary.
At night, you'll have
light from the furniture,
and it'll make it softer, more ambient,
perhaps more intimate at night.
In the day, you'll have the light
coming from the very big windows,
and that should open
the space out, so it'll
have two different
stories going on, I think.
Coneyl and Sarah's interior is inspired
by more than just a love of the Far East.
They have a collection of different images
on CD-ROM
that they gave Mike
as part of the original design brief.
We've made up a scrapbook of things
that we've seen, from magazines,
or things that we've photographed.
These ones are holiday snaps.
But it was just the atmosphere. They
sort of show a difference in texture, say,
from the sea, to the sand,
to the bizarre rocks that are there.
All that natural feeling, and...
Looking through these scrolling images,
you seem to have quite a lot of...
early sort of modern
movement architecture.
Really modernist stuff.
Then you've got these landscapes,
with wonderful, soft, natural textures,
and then you've got these very formal
Japanese interiors with sliding screens.
So, is it literally a sort of... a melded
sort of combination of those ideas?
The whole thing, we
feel, sort of ties together,
even though you have got the modern,
you've got the hard, the soft...
It's just a whole palette
which just combines.
We're trying to take it forward,
because it needs to be something that's...
of this time, and not something
that's trying to repeat a previous design,
or a previous time, or a previous solution.
Hopefully, it's what we're doing - taking
the best of those things, the simple ideas.
To begin with,
we didn't realise that we could create
absolutely... something
totally fresh from scratch.
We didn't have to copy, or use
anything else that was there already.
We could just... It could be brand-new.
Nobody, when they see this final thing,
will expect it of us.
This is like the real us.
So, Mike's turning a
scrapbook of holiday snaps
into a cutting-edge
piece of architecture.
I wonder how.
Well, I think when people give you images,
it's very useful,
because you look at them
not as an image, but as a value.
If they show you a picture
of an all-white house,
it doesn't mean they
want an all-white house.
It means they want a house full of light.
Images that are about nature, and
the beach, and the pebbles, and trees,
are telling you about their love of nature,
and light,
and in a way,
those are the really important ones.
I think the... They're
much more important
for me than the sort
of architectural images.
So, I think you have to
always read between the lines.
To give Coneyl and Sarah
the light-filled home they want,
Mike's making four whole walls
entirely out of glass.
It's not just any glass either.
These huge sheets cost £3,000 each,
and they had to be ordered from Germany
16 weeks ago.
We've only seen a sample this big so far,
so seeing them that huge is just amazing.
Different angles... Fantastic.
Glass walls sound great,
but of course, Coney!
And Sarah don't want
to be on public display,
so for the watt facing the street,
Mike's using another obscure product,
consisting of miniature plastic tubes
sandwiched between two sheets of glass.
Because they're angled up, these tubes
allow you to catch a glimpse of the sky,
but prevent anyone outside from seeing in.
It's taken four months
to get this far, and the
structure is only beginning
to took like a house,
but you can see a very daring building
starting to emerge.
It's March,
and according to the original schedule,
Coneyl and Sarah
should be moving in around now.
Um... But I don't think they're going to
be having their house-warming for what...?
At least another month.
Getting the builders in
is always unpredictable,
but here, with such
an experimental project,
I have to say, I'm surprised they're
not any further behind than a month.
There's still a long way to go,
but as the last sheets
of glass are fitted,
they're finally making
the building watertight.
Yeah, she fits.
Just move it.
Time for the traditional
topping out ceremony.
MANI Ooh!
That's one milestone
they've managed to reach,
but by now, any hopes of a fast-track build
are long forgotten.
Just doesn't show, because...
Coneyl and Sarah
are only just beginning to discuss
the internal finishes
that Mike wants for the house.
He's taking them to see a rather surprising
material he's used on an earlier project -
Viroc, which is MDF to you and me.
This is, um... This is
a Viroc flooring here,
and this is the floor
we're going to be using in
the low area of... the
low building, basically.
Is it sanded?
This has been sanded, yeah, yeah, which is
why you can see it coming through to the...
to the wood element of it as well.
I like it rougher, I think.
- It's pretty good.
- You like it. Good.
The colour's nice.
It's grey, but it's got warmth.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
So, this is the Viroc, unsanded.
This material's running all the way
along the colonnade,
and also in the low building,
all along the side building.
- Inside and out?
- Inside and out, yeah.
I much prefer this.
That's what you'd get
with stone, if you cut it.
Unevenness and...
that whole roughness, wouldn't you?
So, these are basically the MDF cupboards.
This MDF has been stained with an emulsion
that's been watered down.
So, the idea is you can still see
the texture of the MDF underneath.
You're still being honest about the
material, but transforming it slightly.
I like the contrast, the
way it defines the shape.
Still getting that rhythm of lines
and rhythm of rectangles.
Just ties into everything else.
This is made of a material, Filon, that
we were going to use in the low building.
I'm going to try and
persuade you to use it
again, but on the screen,
in the second bedroom.
- I like that it looks like ice.
- I'd still like to see different options.
Because I am a bit worried about the
darkness of the rooms reflecting into it.
I see I'm not going to
get my own way this time.
I'll show you some more choices.
It was really good to see the place
that Mike's just recently finished.
The finishes, and quality of the finishes,
were very, very good.
Seeing material in large scales as
opposed to small swatches was really good,
and the size of walls,
or the size of floors.
Just seeing the gap between the materials,
like the Weyroc.
1mm gap, or 2mm gap-
How does it feel in an actual room?
As for the exterior, Mike had
planned to coat the entire building
in a white render that
sparkles just like a jewel,
using a technique he's borrowed
from a typically unusual source.
I once saw some men
putting white lines on the
road, and realised that
the reason lines glow
is because they have tiny glass beads in.
We then went out and found a company
that was making white lines in the road,
and got some beads,
and gave them to the render company.
We did think
they could just put it on like pebble dash,
but because it's so fine
the guns that usually
fire that don't work for it,
so it had to be put on by hand.
But innovation comes at a cost.
I got my quote a couple of weeks ago,
and it was basically £7,500 more
than we had in the contract.
As we just had some cost overruns
on the drainage,
I'm afraid the drainage ate my render.
Because of building regulations,
we've had to put double drains in
at vast, vast expense.
It's actually cost us £24,000,
and because of that reason,
something had to go, and it was the render.
It would look fantastic,
but I think at the end of the day
we just have to make some compromises.
So, they've had to settle
for a plain white render,
but one especially designed
for wooden buildings.
It's a shame, because we've lost
our glowing building in a way.
It's the middle of April, seven weeks after
Coneyl and Sarah were hoping to move in.
Indoors, the builders are only
just getting round to the first fix,
putting in electrics and insulation.
Mike's opted for recycled
newspaper that can
be blown directly
into the watt cavities.
The plumbing and underfloor heating
are also going in.
The finished floors and walls
won'! look much different,
because they're going for materials
like chipboard and MDF.
It's nearly the end of May,
and despite all the setbacks, from here it
looks like Sarah and Coneyl have got there.
Hiya. Good to see you. How are you?
Hi, how are you doing?
- Very well.
- Good, good.
What...
What an amazing space.
What an amazing view down the end.
But, uh... it's... it's not finished.
Not quite, no.
- Is the kitchen here?
- Yeah.
So, what's going to go where?
- This is a central island.
- Yes.
Over here, we're going to have the sink.
- Yeah.
- And then here is going to be the hob.
And it's backed by this
enormous glass wall.
The glass is like
a honeycomb of straws angled upwards.
In skyscrapers, to stop heat coming in,
they normally angle it the other way,
so the heat doesn't come in,
but we've done it the other way.
Mike is the first person
to use it that way?
Something like that, yeah.
So, that's natural light.
Artificial light in here
is provided by what?
Well, these are
all the jewel items here. The honeycomb...
These cupboards?
They're going to have
fluorescent lights inside,
and a lot of the light of the space
is going to be provided by these.
- It's very delicate, very fragile.
- Very atmospheric.
- This area here is your living room?
- Yeah.
- Is that correct?
- Yes.
This morning, it is
bathed in light, isn't it?
It's going to be so beautiful.
It'll be fantastic sitting here
reading the papers and drinking coffee
on Sunday morning.
What's this flooring
that's going to go down?
It's... Actually, it's chipboard, and
it's been painted just with white paint.
So, it's the same stuff that's
on the wall here, isn't it?
The whole of this space
is all going to be chipboard.
It's a bit like Japanese paper.
It's going to fill the
entire space? It's going to...
Yeah, it will go
all the way round.
Glass, white,
rock board, and a few jewels,
and that's it, isn't it, really?
And light. It's very, very simple.
There's only one room
above the living space -
the master bedroom.
Great space up here, isn't it?
This is your bedroom?
- And bathroom.
- Where's the bathroom going to go?
There's going to be a bench across here,
with the bath set in. The sink next to it.
So, where's the toilet going?
The toilet is here.
It's within a jewel. It's
basically a free standing
cupboard, and you
can go round either side.
- It's stood in the middle of the room?
- Yeah. On this side here is the loo,
and on the other side is a wardrobe.
So, it's a wardrobe
backed onto a free standing
cupboard that you can
walk all the way round,
in which there is the pan?
Yes.
It's like... It's the 21st century
privy, isn't it, inside the house?
You've got quite a view,
haven't you, from here?
Downstairs it's very
private, but up here
you can be seen from
those houses over there.
Yeah, but here we've
got the blind which will
come up, and that
will give it the privacy.
- That'll be about here, will it?
- Yeah.
This will then seem like a separate room,
whereas at the moment,
it feels as if it's pan of the whole thing.
It does feel like all of
a sudden we're in the
south of France. We're
on holiday, maybe in Italy,
because of the amount of light coming into
the space, even now, unpainted, unfinished.
But despite that, it's still... it's a
one-bedroom building, isn't it, this?
There's rooms down the side
which are also bedrooms.
They can be bedrooms, they can
be... whatever you want them to be.
In conventional terms,
it's a one-bedroom house.
- A maisonette.
- It's a very expensive one-bedroom house.
I love this view down here.
All the way down that corridor.
And all the way down the side here,
up all these colonnade paths,
we're going to grow robinia and jasmine.
From here, you look across and...?
It's a mirror.
You can see the rooms on the other side.
- Yeah.
- This leads right back to the studio?
This is... This is a very different space,
isn't it, to the house?
It's, um...
a higher ceiling
than the main living area downstairs.
What's it going to be used for?
This is your studio? Photography studio?
A whole sort of multipurpose space.
Is it going to be any
different to over there?
It's going to be
a darker finish.
We're going for...
Slightly based on some Japanese ideas.
This is a stained MDF,
which is very, very stable and solid.
What about the pinhole camera,
because that's the blind, presumably?
- The blind's in, so...
- Yeah? Does it work?
We had a practice go
with sheets of card and paper.
What, here?
- Or on the model?
- No, here, but...
It half worked.
Is there an optimum time of day?
When it's brightest at that end,
like now, for example.
Outside at least,
this house looks nearly finished.
The elegant, super-thin construction,
the gleaming white paint,
and the expanses of glass
all suggest delicacy and lightness.
But there's more.
This is an enclosed
space, which minors itself.
The reflections keep
presenting, like the
camera obscura, new
illusions of more space.
But the greatest triumph of this design
has to be the way the two main buildings,
jewel box and camera,
gaze at each other across the water,
as though in love.
Mike has brilliantly
engineered this relationship
by building the pair
of connecting corridors,
one of which is divided into rooms,
one of which is an open walkway.
These link the main
buildings, and are
sufficiently tall to exclude
the rest of the world.
In this tranquil, poised,
and very romantic space,
you could be almost anywhere in the world.
So, the 21-week super-fast
build on this project
that was originally envisaged,
didn't quite happen like that.
It's a bit like life itself.
Things are difficult,
so building's a really
difficult process,
and, you know... it's a
bit medieval, frankly.
- What have you learned from the process?
- You need an awful lot of energy.
And you need to put in a som of 150%.
If you want to do something
that hasn't necessarily been done,
you need to keep pushing,
and pushing, and pushing.
Sometimes, the harder you try,
maybe the harder it is,
because you're making your own standards.
Do you feel that this is your house?
Or is this a house that belongs to Mike
that he's going to give you?
Um...
It's... our house.
I think it's got his... Mike basically
picked up on all our sort of sensitivities,
and put them in here,
but in his own personal way,
and we're, you know,
pretty much totally in tune.
And I think that has
been so key to this project.
You never really had a fixed
specific budget for this job.
It seems to me
projects don't really work in that way.
You talk about fixed
budget, and that... that is...
- Some do.
- But that is a fairly naive point of view.
It's like, "Which budget
are you talking about?"
The one you had when you started
talking about it, the one it was costed at,
or the first budget when people started
putting real figures together?
Do you know how much this has
cost you so far? Have you kept a tally?
Er, sort of.
- What does it work out at?
- Quite a lot.
I reckon it's cost you £450,000.
- We won't be too drawn on that, but...
- Probably plus the site, I'd say.
But, yeah...
You're kind of in the ballpark, basically.
Yeah, I must admit,
selling's not in our mind at all.
It's like, "Have we actually done something
we wanted to do? Will it make us happy?"
It's the main thing, really.
That's the most important thing.
And the answer to all
that so far is yes, exactly.
We're sort of talking
sometimes, and we think,
"We must be mad to do
this. Why are we doing
this? Our lives could
have been so peaceful,
and we've added on this extra stress."
For two years,
we've been going through all this stress,
but then you think,
"But I really wanted to! I had to do it."
That's the whole creative thing.
You make something cos it doesn't exist.
We couldn't find it, so we had to make it.
Some might label this house
a modernist, impersonal glass box.
But forget the labels. It's actually
very personal to Coneyl and Sarah.
They see it as a simple,
private, modest home.
More importantly, they
can now recognise it as
the space they've always
dreamed of living in,
and Mike's genius has been
to deliver them that intimate dream.
It don't come cheap, it don't come easy,
but it's well worth the wait.
When you come in,
it starts to reveal itself.
The more you get to
know it, the better it gets.
It feels like the place
I've always imagined to live in, and be in.
It feels natural to be here.
It'll be the longest ten weeks in history,
because you want it to happen.
Nobody, when they see
this final thing, will expect it of us.
London is currently being overwhelmed by a
mass outbreak of modern millennium building
that is transforming the capital.
Wherever we live, most of us in Britain
know and probably admire one local piece
of avant-garde public architecture.
But how would you feel if a high-tech
building suddenly sprang up in your street,
or for that matter,
is it your idea of a dream home?
Well, it's certainly a long-held dream
of the couple I'm meeting this week,
Sarah and Coneyl.
We've been looking for somewhere
for about three years
that we could move
into, possibly convert,
change, make into a
live-work space, whatever.
But we just couldn't find anything,
so I was talking to some architects
who came to the conclusion
we could build somewhere.
It seemed far-fetched
at the beginning, but
at the end, it seemed
like the logical idea,
so, for better or worse,
we took the plunge.
Both Coneyl and I live for the moment,
live for now,
and so it seems to be absolutely perfect
that we're creating a house
that will be a 21st Century house.
They're no strangers to modem design.
Sarah Jordan makes
award-winning contemporary jewellery,
and Coneyl Jay is a freelance photographer.
They want to live in a
unique, modern space
that will also accommodate
their businesses.
What we do anyway in our working
life, we always create new things,
so it just seems like one step further
to create a house,
an environment for us to live in
which is something totally and utterly new.
It's a challenge. A massive challenge.
To build their 21st Century dream,
they've employed architect Mike Tonkin.
Coneyl and Sarah have been a jeweller
and a photographer.
That was the key for us,
and we said that, um...
jewellery's about being looked at,
and attracting attention,
and photography's about looking,
so they're very nice... nicely opposed,
so we said, "Let's just make
two buildings that look at each other."
What are you putting into this building
which is jewel-like and is photographic?
We've taken the house, and we've
said the house is like a jewel box.
And the jewels are the objects in the house
that you live with,
so the bath becomes a
jewel for washing in, and
the kitchen becomes a
jewel that you cook at,
and each of the jewels have lights in
that light up.
The studio we've actually made
into a camera obscura,
and it's working
like a very, very large pinhole camera.
It's dark inside, it has
a blackout blind that
comes down, and it'll
have a small pinhole.
A little hole in the blackout blind?
And that will project an image of what?
It'll project an image of the house
upside-down on the back of the studio.
- This is all in theory?
- In theory, yeah.
Have you done
this kind of domestic build before?
We've not done a new
build before, so, um...
So, this is your first
complete new build?
Our first new building, yes.
The design is for two buildings -
a double-height studio, and a house -
that face each other
across a sunken water garden.
This whole design is
about the play of light.
Vast glass walls flood the
open-plan interior with sunlight,
while the kitchen units have lighting
built into them so they glow in the dark.
Upstairs, on a mezzanine floor,
the master bedroom
and bathroom also feature
custom-made furniture
with built-in lighting.
The house looks out
across the flooded courtyard
to the double-height studio
at the opposite end of the site.
A sheltered walkway on the left
connects the two buildings,
while on the right,
there's a long, glass-walled wing
containing bedrooms and Sarah's workshop,
leading through
to photographer ConeyFs studio.
Taking advantage of
the tong, tapering site,
the studio will behave
like a huge pinhole camera.
When the specially designed blinds
are lowered, an image of the house
will project itself onto the studio walls.
They plan to use lots
of newly-developed
materials, and cutting-edge
building methods,
yet the frame of this
very contemporary design
will be built from the
most ancient of materials -
wood.
But it'll be given an
original finish, with a
coating of white render
mixed with glass beads.
This way, the whole building
will sparkle inside and out.
Where else is this starkly contemporary
piece of architecture being built
but in a quiet residential
street in North London.
- Hello.
- Hello.
- How are you?
- Very well.
I have to say, this place is not easy
to find. It's kind of really tucked away.
What did the place used to be?
Is it garages?
- It's the old mechanics workshop.
- Really?
- These garages along here?
- Lock-up garages.
Yeah?
The whole site? Which is quite large.
How's it going to work?
I mean, because it's
an extremely long,
narrow position, isn't it?
The site is very thin.
We're sort of planning
on moving a lot of the
living accommodation
to the right-hand side,
having bedrooms on
the right-hand side here.
At the front here,
we're going to build
an absolutely outstanding glittery box,
and then to have the working
at the rear of the site.
So, it's going to be
a long, thin building?
Yeah, with a sort of
garden in the centre.
It's definitely not going to be
one of your pointy-roofed houses.
Show me the back here.
This was the garage, was it?
I'm sure the local planners have views
on Coneyl and Sarah's modern design.
Getting permission to build any new house
is never straightforward.
A good start is to buy a plot
that already has planning permission,
or find a plot with a derelict house
that can be replaced.
But Coneyl and Sarah
are taking a different approach.
So, has it gone through relatively swiftly?
We're still waiting to get the
final piece of paper at the moment.
You haven't actually
got planning permission?
We had no idea we
could get permission.
That's breaking the first golden rule.
- When did you put in the application?
- July last year.
- July '99.
- That's... 11 months.
We just believed in what we wanted to do.
We risked everything by buying the site
without planning permission.
Either we risked losing
the land, or we got the
land, and risked not
getting planning permission.
Risking the planning permission
is a much better risk, I think,
than risk trying to find this again.
- We're never going to find this again.
- Yeah.
But the fact that you
haven't got the paper,
does that imply you'll
receive the paper soon,
or could it be another 11 months?
We do believe
that the planners will come through.
But it's the one pan of the process
where you cannot really force the issue.
You have to go with the speed and the pace
at which they work at.
Basically, they've got our
head in the noose. If they say no,
then... we stop.
It's the end.
Coneyl and Sarah have gone and bought a
piece of land with no planning permission,
so are they mad, or just naive?
Well, in fact, theirs is
quite a well-calculated risk,
because the site already
has a building on it,
albeit one which is derelict,
disused and light industrial.
It's squeezed in between houses and shops,
so the chances are the planners are going
to want to change its use to residential.
Having said that, I just don't know
if they'll buy the avant-garde design
in what is such a polite Edwardian street.
A nail-biting year after first
applying for planning permission,
the architect Mike gets a response.
Oh, actually, I should
have given you this before.
Oh, my God! I don't believe it!
I don't believe it!
Cheers.
Here's to the Planning Department.
I think we're probably
the most happy people
in the whole of North
London at the moment.
It's been one absolutely amazing day.
Incredibly busy, and the best news
that you could possibly have ever had.
Very unexpected. I mean,
I think we waited a long while for it,
and... it was worth the patience,
and it was worth keeping cool.
They're all up for some modern design.
To be honest,
it seems almost unreal that we've got it.
We've stopped ourselves
getting excited for so long,
because until you've actually got
this piece of paper
that we've been talking
about for so long as well,
it's like, "Can it really be true?"
We can actually, actually do
this most dream-like thing.
To pay for the new build, Coneyl
and Sarah are selling the family home
that Coneyl's lived in his whole life.
They're renting a flat nearby
for the duration of the build.
It's all go now. Everything
else has kind of fallen into place.
The house is ready for sale,
we've found a flat to move to.
That's it. It's a green light, really.
It's a major day,
it's a really, really big day.
It is like the first day of
the rest of the life, really.
Some sentimental attachments
to memories here, which is obvious,
but it's kind of outweighed
by the excitement of
this is one step closer
to what we're trying to do.
We can sign off the past now, and
go to the future with no fears whatsoever.
Coneyt and Sarah are hoping
to start on site in two weeks.
They're using every inch of their land by
building right up to the edge of this site,
but in a built-up area like this,
that means a tot of neighbours,
and a lot of time-consuming negotiations.
Two weeks turned into two months,
but Mike's confident that once they
get started, it will be a fast-track build.
Now we've got the contractor appointed,
and we start on site,
it's 21 weeks' construction time.
It's a fast programme we're working to,
but all of the techniques we're using,
and the construction methods
mean we should be able
to produce the building on time.
Like the architect, the
main building contractors
have never built
anything like this before,
but they're showing the same confidence.
- So, Bob, you're running this job?
- I am.
The build is 20 weeks, plus you've got
a week off at Christmas, haven't you?
- That's right.
- So, is that doable?
Oh, yeah, it's easily doable.
It's probably a little bit...
a little bit more than we need.
- A little bit generous?
- In places.
Quid pro quo,
you think you'll be in...
more or less on schedule?
We'll be on schedule, yes.
I'm really curious to see
if a house can be built in 20 weeks,
let alone an ambitious piece
of modem architecture.
Work finally begins on site
with the demolition of the old garages.
The fast-track build
starts out at a snail's pace.
It's not really a demolition.
It's more of a dismantling,
because the buildings have to be taken down
very carefully.
We're surrounded by about nine neighbours,
and obviously don't want anything
that we do to affect their business,
their home, or whatever.
Demolition may go slower than expected,
but after waiting two years,
Coney! and Sarah aren't complaining.
Today they started taking off
the old garage doors,
and slowly knocking down, all by hand.
Things are happening. It's moving.
It's like a running
elephant. You can't stop it.
But it's exciting and
scary in equal measures
because suddenly it's
becoming a real thing.
It's like when we first decided we were
going to build and design our own house.
We were really, really excited then,
and then in between
there's been tons of hassle,
and now we've come out the other end.
It is actually being built for us,
and that is just really exciting.
To make this a record-breaking fast build,
Mike's using a series
of technical innovations,
some of which have never been used
in a domestic build,
like the steel micropiles
he's using as foundations.
Most houses are built
on concrete-filled trenches,
but here, the entire building
will be raised completely off the ground
on hollow steel rods.
The micropiles are drilled
six metres into the ground.
Cement slurry is then pumped through them
into the earth below,
where it spreads and
sets to form a solid base.
Now, Bob, these big
galvanised brackets here
are going to carry the main beams
of the floor, aren't they, of the building?
The whole building sits on these.
Sits on these. The primary supports
running the full length of the building.
Blimey.
- So, how many are there?
- There are 83.
- Blimey, that's a lot, isn't it?
- It is.
And what's it used for?
It's normally used for
embankment stabilisation
where an embankment...
With Railtrack's floods,
they've lost a lot of embankment.
This sort of thing will
stitch it all together.
You stitch it together,
fill it with concrete,
and stop the bank
from slipping down.
But this is an
entirely different use,
because this is taking
weight in compression.
It is, but in compression
it's actually a
little bit better than it
would be in tension.
- It's a kind of wonderful new use for it.
- A new use for it.
And it's so much quicker
than conventional foundations.
I'm just amazed no
one's thought of it before.
In his quest for speed, Mike's not afraid
to use mass-market construction methods.
He's having the framework of the house
manufactured off-site in a timber factory.
They'll prefabricate all
the timber panels here.
The details we did
will make the package
quite straightforward
to put together on site.
All the thinking of it will have been done
at this end before we hit the site,
and we're probably going to be looking at
a time span of two and a half weeks,
hopefully, on site,
getting the superstructure up.
Once on site, the
panels wilt just have to
be bolted together like
a giant Meccano set,
and as such, construction
should be child's play.
This is a 20-week build, which is very
tight. There's not much room for manoeuvre.
They're six weeks in, and they're
already a week and a half behind.
But today is the day that the timber frame
arrives, which means that within two weeks
Sarah and Coneyl should have
the skeleton of their new house.
The first delivery from the factory
is the floor panels.
These are simply bolted onto wooden beams
that sit on top of the micropiles.
The builders get off to a flying start,
and it doesn't take long to map out
the footprint of the house.
- Pleased with what you have so far?
- It's great seeing it take shape
after it's all been discussions
and talks and papers, and faxes, and...
We went away,
and there was just the drains here,
and we came back, and they
started to put the whole floor plan,
and the piles, so you could sort of see
the space, and where the rooms were going,
and that was pretty amazing.
You got a real sense of how... the whole
size and perspective, and everything.
And now this is up, you get an indication
of the size of the courtyard,
and the walkway, and the rooms.
It's the real thing,
I want to put my sleeping bag down,
and come down now, and...
I want to live here now,
that's the thing, isn't it?
It'll be the longest 10 or 12 weeks in
history, because you want it to happen.
Ten weeks may seem a long time to them,
but when you're making a building,
time can pass all too quickly.
This is the cloister that connects
Coneyl and Sarah's jewel house at the front
with their photography studio at the back.
Now, according to the schedule, all the
timberwork on the site should now be up.
Unfortunately, neither the house
nor the studio have even been started.
They're three weeks behind, and
they're on a 20-week fast-track schedule,
so what I want to know is, how are
they going to make up the difference?
So, Mike, you're
already two and a half,
nearly three weeks
late on it, so why is that?
I mean, it's happened
for a couple of reasons.
The, um, the pile
caps didn't get
galvanised, which is
a sort of silly mistake.
- You spec'd them as being galvanised?
- Yes.
So they had to go in a queue
to be galvanised in a galvanising bath.
- It's somebody forgetting?
- Somebody forgot.
The building process is thousands of people
making decisions,
and it just needs one person in that chain
to somehow get it wrong,
and the whole apple can sort of tipped.
- Yeah.
- And that's what's happened to us here.
And then we're having a few problems
with the timber frame.
And most of it should have been here now.
There are loads of panels here,
but they are not the right ones?
These are the roof
panels. They built the
roof panels first because
that's the easy bit.
The tricky details are on the wall panels,
and so they'll be building those...
You'd think they'd build the wall
panels first, so you would put them up...
You'd put them up first.
You'd want to put the floor down,
and then the walls,
and the roof goes on last.
The building's simple,
but some of the joints are complicated,
because although the building
is just two boxes looking at each other,
when it's finished, it'll be very seamless.
A lot of the complexity
is inside the joints, so
a lot of the clever
structural work is hidden.
Now, you chose the joinery company because
they came with the best quote, I guess.
They were relatively cheap.
Yeah, they had the best price, yeah.
Yeah. Do you think, on reflection,
perhaps they might not quite be up to it?
It's just... But it's not
like a regular house.
Is it something quite
ambitious for them?
I think so, and maybe
it's quite complicated.
Building always takes a long time.
I think Alvar Aalto said,
"If you want a building,
you can have it quickly.
If you want architecture,
you have to wait."
That's not good news
for a fast-track build.
The first batch of wall panels
arrive in the New Year,
and the framework can start to go up.
There's nothing revolutionary
about timber-frame houses,
but the way this house is being
put together is far from ordinary.
Conventional timber-panelled houses
rely on a skin of plywood,
and a frame of thick, chunky soft wood.
Now, when these are nailed together,
you're always going to get
a degree of movement between the two,
so how do builders get over that?
Well, what they do is,
they stick loads and loads of nails in.
They use really solid,
thick, chunky timbers,
they use loads of them, and then they
put internal partition walls in your house
which help brace the whole structure.
But Coneyl and Sarah don't want lots
of internal walls breaking up their space.
They want a big, open-plan house.
And so to help them, the architect
and the engineer have gone right back
to basic engineering principles, and
they've designed a system of timber-framing
that nobody's ever used before.
They're using a glue which performs
rather like welding does on steel.
It forms a really tight bond
between two pieces of metal,
just as the glue forms a
really tight, intimate joint
between a piece of plywood,
and the soft wood on it.
And the result of that is,
there's absolutely no flex in it at all.
But at the sub-zero temperatures
of early January,
the glue isn't drying, and the builders
are constantly having to reset the timber.
On top of that,
a lot of the panels are having to be...
um, tweaked on site to get them to fit.
I've been working on timber frame
for about 12 years now,
and this is... I've never done
a timber-frame house like this before
in the 12 years I've worked.
It's, um... very complex.
There's a lot of gluing, a lot of bolting,
a lot of rebates.
And it's just... different
than we've ever done before.
It's not really going
quite as smoothly as planned.
Prefabricating the frame in a factory
was meant to save time on site.
I think, basically, they just maybe
overlooked how much work was involved,
you know, in this building, cos a typical
timber frame - what I call a timber frame -
would basically have been finished
in anything from seven, ten days.
As it is, assembling this framework
has taken three weeks,
and they're not even halfway.
Coneyl and Sarah return in February
from a business trip,
hoping to find their house up.
We've just got back from Japan,
and we went to the site on the Sunday
when we got back in the evening,
and we were expecting
to see the rest of the timber frame up,
and we thought,
"Mm... Looks as if
something's gone a little bit wrong here."
After a handful of pretty usual delays,
an act of God brings
an unmitigated disaster.
There's been a fire in
the timber frame factory.
They've lost their
machinery, tools, and all
the detailed drawings
to make the panels.
I was woken up
about five past one on a Saturday morning,
and, um, basically we were informed
that the workshop was on fire.
We didn't really know what to expect
other than the fact that we could see a big
chimney effect of flame and steam rising
on the horizon sort of thing,
and realised as we got nearer
that it was our workshop that was going.
It's wiped out all of the
manufacturing facility,
and obviously,
the follow-on from that has been
that we can't get the stuff onto site
when it should have been.
With the schedule now
spiralling out of control,
Mike calls an emergency meeting.
So, to fill you in a bit more
with the news on the fire...
We've lost some
time, but it's obviously
caused a sort of complete
hiccup in the system.
The fire throws the
schedule completely out,
and Mike's given up all hope
of making up lost time.
They're now looking at running a
minimum of four weeks over their programme.
Al least Coneyl and Sarah
won't suffer financially.
They've been smart enough to negotiate
a fixed-price deal with their contractors,
which means they've
agreed a total price for
the build, regardless
of how long it takes.
In one respect, it doesn't really matter,
because we're not dependent on having
to move into the house on a certain date,
but the other side, it's
incredibly frustrating,
because we really
want to be there now.
Even with a few
weeks' delay, it's still a
quick build compared
to a traditional build.
So, that's still a
good thing, but it's
frustrating, because you
still want to be in there,
you know, and the
sooner the better, really.
The factory pulls out all the stops,
and manages to deliver the remaining panels
an amazing ten days after the fire.
White the timber frame contractors
finish off the house frame,
the roofers are making a start on
the studio, and the covered walkway.
Mike's chosen another innovative technique
to use on the roof -
a flat, waterproof membrane.
This is made up of a vapour barrier
that's heat-sealed to the timber roof.
Once that layer is cooled,
insulation is sandwiched between it
and a final waterproofing surface.
This kind of membrane roofing is more often
used on big loud get commercial projects,
but Mike's keen to use a top-end product
instead of the cheaper option
of roofing felt or tiles
to guarantee that on
a totally flat roof like
this, the surface will
be 100% waterproof.
It's another example
of how Mike's borrowing
methods and products
from commercial building.
It's tactics like this that'll
make his design unique.
This build seems to
push all the boundaries
in terms of its design
and its construction.
For example, down here,
these steel and concrete micropiles
which normally are used
to reinforce motorway embankments,
but which here are supporting...
the whole building.
And the surprisingly
thin roof panel section
which relies on glue rather than
masses of timber for its strength.
And the reflective concrete render which is
going to be made with little glass beads.
Now, each of these ideas
may seem risky and experimental,
but in fact, they're all
proven in their own areas.
If Mike's taking a risk here at all,
it's in bringing these different
technologies together in one house.
But I think that's a risk
worth taking, because the
result is going to be a
very interesting building.
It may look like
the building's just starting to go up,
but it's enough to give Coneyl and Sarah
a glimpse of their new home.
So, is this space working out
as you thought it would?
I think it's working out better
than we thought it would.
When you see the model,
you imagine things being small,
but if you're actually standing here,
you can get a real feeling
of the double-height void that'll be here,
and the whole width of the lounge.
I was quite sort of worried that the rooms
were going to seem too small over there,
but when you're standing
in it, it seems like...
It starts to create its own little world.
It's really interesting.
It makes me think we're probably never
going to leave once we get in.
So, now you can see the structure coming
along, how are you planning the interiors?
What will they look like?
Very simple, basically.
Trying to make
something that's going
to last, be hard-wearing,
and will look better the more it gets worn.
I suppose it's like a sort
of interpretation of places
that we've always been really happy
and felt at home with.
Some of the old temples in Japan.
Yeah.
The idea of a courtyard,
and a very calm space in the centre,
and then the rooms around the outside.
So, will it in any way
look, then, Japanese?
Will it have an Oriental quality?
I think it'll have the calmness you feel,
the sereneness of being in...
The idea of a courtyard
is definitely a Japanese story,
and there are definitely themes,
elements and flavours,
but it's not strictly trying
to copy something else.
If you've got a kind of clean slate
to start building,
you might as well go for
your sort of wildest ideas, you know.
Coneyi and Sarah are both
frequent visitors to Japan for their work,
and it's obviously an important
source of inspiration for them.
I went with them to look around
a brand-new bar in London
that has a Japanese design, to get a better
understanding of the took they're planning.
Listening to how you describe your place,
I'd have thought there's quite a lot of...
those elements in this bar, no?
I mean, soft-coloured materials,
wood, that kind of thing.
I mean, the textures, and the feel, and
the look does have a sort of similarity,
but our interpretation
is completely different.
It's much simpler.
The finishes and detailing
are more decorative than what we'll have.
I think we've pared things down.
There's similar influences here.
There is a similar palette.
There's a darkness to it
that will be appropriate
to the colours we're using.
So, natural materials,
self-coloured materials...
- Simple.
- Yeah.
But there is an ambience here
which I think is quite interesting.
Sort of large areas of
light. You're not aware
of any specific specular
sort of lights either.
So, there's no harsh glare,
no obvious light sources. It's a gentle...
The studio will be dark,
but the living area will be quite light,
so it should be a lot
more open, but it will vary.
At night, you'll have
light from the furniture,
and it'll make it softer, more ambient,
perhaps more intimate at night.
In the day, you'll have the light
coming from the very big windows,
and that should open
the space out, so it'll
have two different
stories going on, I think.
Coneyl and Sarah's interior is inspired
by more than just a love of the Far East.
They have a collection of different images
on CD-ROM
that they gave Mike
as part of the original design brief.
We've made up a scrapbook of things
that we've seen, from magazines,
or things that we've photographed.
These ones are holiday snaps.
But it was just the atmosphere. They
sort of show a difference in texture, say,
from the sea, to the sand,
to the bizarre rocks that are there.
All that natural feeling, and...
Looking through these scrolling images,
you seem to have quite a lot of...
early sort of modern
movement architecture.
Really modernist stuff.
Then you've got these landscapes,
with wonderful, soft, natural textures,
and then you've got these very formal
Japanese interiors with sliding screens.
So, is it literally a sort of... a melded
sort of combination of those ideas?
The whole thing, we
feel, sort of ties together,
even though you have got the modern,
you've got the hard, the soft...
It's just a whole palette
which just combines.
We're trying to take it forward,
because it needs to be something that's...
of this time, and not something
that's trying to repeat a previous design,
or a previous time, or a previous solution.
Hopefully, it's what we're doing - taking
the best of those things, the simple ideas.
To begin with,
we didn't realise that we could create
absolutely... something
totally fresh from scratch.
We didn't have to copy, or use
anything else that was there already.
We could just... It could be brand-new.
Nobody, when they see this final thing,
will expect it of us.
This is like the real us.
So, Mike's turning a
scrapbook of holiday snaps
into a cutting-edge
piece of architecture.
I wonder how.
Well, I think when people give you images,
it's very useful,
because you look at them
not as an image, but as a value.
If they show you a picture
of an all-white house,
it doesn't mean they
want an all-white house.
It means they want a house full of light.
Images that are about nature, and
the beach, and the pebbles, and trees,
are telling you about their love of nature,
and light,
and in a way,
those are the really important ones.
I think the... They're
much more important
for me than the sort
of architectural images.
So, I think you have to
always read between the lines.
To give Coneyl and Sarah
the light-filled home they want,
Mike's making four whole walls
entirely out of glass.
It's not just any glass either.
These huge sheets cost £3,000 each,
and they had to be ordered from Germany
16 weeks ago.
We've only seen a sample this big so far,
so seeing them that huge is just amazing.
Different angles... Fantastic.
Glass walls sound great,
but of course, Coney!
And Sarah don't want
to be on public display,
so for the watt facing the street,
Mike's using another obscure product,
consisting of miniature plastic tubes
sandwiched between two sheets of glass.
Because they're angled up, these tubes
allow you to catch a glimpse of the sky,
but prevent anyone outside from seeing in.
It's taken four months
to get this far, and the
structure is only beginning
to took like a house,
but you can see a very daring building
starting to emerge.
It's March,
and according to the original schedule,
Coneyl and Sarah
should be moving in around now.
Um... But I don't think they're going to
be having their house-warming for what...?
At least another month.
Getting the builders in
is always unpredictable,
but here, with such
an experimental project,
I have to say, I'm surprised they're
not any further behind than a month.
There's still a long way to go,
but as the last sheets
of glass are fitted,
they're finally making
the building watertight.
Yeah, she fits.
Just move it.
Time for the traditional
topping out ceremony.
MANI Ooh!
That's one milestone
they've managed to reach,
but by now, any hopes of a fast-track build
are long forgotten.
Just doesn't show, because...
Coneyl and Sarah
are only just beginning to discuss
the internal finishes
that Mike wants for the house.
He's taking them to see a rather surprising
material he's used on an earlier project -
Viroc, which is MDF to you and me.
This is, um... This is
a Viroc flooring here,
and this is the floor
we're going to be using in
the low area of... the
low building, basically.
Is it sanded?
This has been sanded, yeah, yeah, which is
why you can see it coming through to the...
to the wood element of it as well.
I like it rougher, I think.
- It's pretty good.
- You like it. Good.
The colour's nice.
It's grey, but it's got warmth.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
So, this is the Viroc, unsanded.
This material's running all the way
along the colonnade,
and also in the low building,
all along the side building.
- Inside and out?
- Inside and out, yeah.
I much prefer this.
That's what you'd get
with stone, if you cut it.
Unevenness and...
that whole roughness, wouldn't you?
So, these are basically the MDF cupboards.
This MDF has been stained with an emulsion
that's been watered down.
So, the idea is you can still see
the texture of the MDF underneath.
You're still being honest about the
material, but transforming it slightly.
I like the contrast, the
way it defines the shape.
Still getting that rhythm of lines
and rhythm of rectangles.
Just ties into everything else.
This is made of a material, Filon, that
we were going to use in the low building.
I'm going to try and
persuade you to use it
again, but on the screen,
in the second bedroom.
- I like that it looks like ice.
- I'd still like to see different options.
Because I am a bit worried about the
darkness of the rooms reflecting into it.
I see I'm not going to
get my own way this time.
I'll show you some more choices.
It was really good to see the place
that Mike's just recently finished.
The finishes, and quality of the finishes,
were very, very good.
Seeing material in large scales as
opposed to small swatches was really good,
and the size of walls,
or the size of floors.
Just seeing the gap between the materials,
like the Weyroc.
1mm gap, or 2mm gap-
How does it feel in an actual room?
As for the exterior, Mike had
planned to coat the entire building
in a white render that
sparkles just like a jewel,
using a technique he's borrowed
from a typically unusual source.
I once saw some men
putting white lines on the
road, and realised that
the reason lines glow
is because they have tiny glass beads in.
We then went out and found a company
that was making white lines in the road,
and got some beads,
and gave them to the render company.
We did think
they could just put it on like pebble dash,
but because it's so fine
the guns that usually
fire that don't work for it,
so it had to be put on by hand.
But innovation comes at a cost.
I got my quote a couple of weeks ago,
and it was basically £7,500 more
than we had in the contract.
As we just had some cost overruns
on the drainage,
I'm afraid the drainage ate my render.
Because of building regulations,
we've had to put double drains in
at vast, vast expense.
It's actually cost us £24,000,
and because of that reason,
something had to go, and it was the render.
It would look fantastic,
but I think at the end of the day
we just have to make some compromises.
So, they've had to settle
for a plain white render,
but one especially designed
for wooden buildings.
It's a shame, because we've lost
our glowing building in a way.
It's the middle of April, seven weeks after
Coneyl and Sarah were hoping to move in.
Indoors, the builders are only
just getting round to the first fix,
putting in electrics and insulation.
Mike's opted for recycled
newspaper that can
be blown directly
into the watt cavities.
The plumbing and underfloor heating
are also going in.
The finished floors and walls
won'! look much different,
because they're going for materials
like chipboard and MDF.
It's nearly the end of May,
and despite all the setbacks, from here it
looks like Sarah and Coneyl have got there.
Hiya. Good to see you. How are you?
Hi, how are you doing?
- Very well.
- Good, good.
What...
What an amazing space.
What an amazing view down the end.
But, uh... it's... it's not finished.
Not quite, no.
- Is the kitchen here?
- Yeah.
So, what's going to go where?
- This is a central island.
- Yes.
Over here, we're going to have the sink.
- Yeah.
- And then here is going to be the hob.
And it's backed by this
enormous glass wall.
The glass is like
a honeycomb of straws angled upwards.
In skyscrapers, to stop heat coming in,
they normally angle it the other way,
so the heat doesn't come in,
but we've done it the other way.
Mike is the first person
to use it that way?
Something like that, yeah.
So, that's natural light.
Artificial light in here
is provided by what?
Well, these are
all the jewel items here. The honeycomb...
These cupboards?
They're going to have
fluorescent lights inside,
and a lot of the light of the space
is going to be provided by these.
- It's very delicate, very fragile.
- Very atmospheric.
- This area here is your living room?
- Yeah.
- Is that correct?
- Yes.
This morning, it is
bathed in light, isn't it?
It's going to be so beautiful.
It'll be fantastic sitting here
reading the papers and drinking coffee
on Sunday morning.
What's this flooring
that's going to go down?
It's... Actually, it's chipboard, and
it's been painted just with white paint.
So, it's the same stuff that's
on the wall here, isn't it?
The whole of this space
is all going to be chipboard.
It's a bit like Japanese paper.
It's going to fill the
entire space? It's going to...
Yeah, it will go
all the way round.
Glass, white,
rock board, and a few jewels,
and that's it, isn't it, really?
And light. It's very, very simple.
There's only one room
above the living space -
the master bedroom.
Great space up here, isn't it?
This is your bedroom?
- And bathroom.
- Where's the bathroom going to go?
There's going to be a bench across here,
with the bath set in. The sink next to it.
So, where's the toilet going?
The toilet is here.
It's within a jewel. It's
basically a free standing
cupboard, and you
can go round either side.
- It's stood in the middle of the room?
- Yeah. On this side here is the loo,
and on the other side is a wardrobe.
So, it's a wardrobe
backed onto a free standing
cupboard that you can
walk all the way round,
in which there is the pan?
Yes.
It's like... It's the 21st century
privy, isn't it, inside the house?
You've got quite a view,
haven't you, from here?
Downstairs it's very
private, but up here
you can be seen from
those houses over there.
Yeah, but here we've
got the blind which will
come up, and that
will give it the privacy.
- That'll be about here, will it?
- Yeah.
This will then seem like a separate room,
whereas at the moment,
it feels as if it's pan of the whole thing.
It does feel like all of
a sudden we're in the
south of France. We're
on holiday, maybe in Italy,
because of the amount of light coming into
the space, even now, unpainted, unfinished.
But despite that, it's still... it's a
one-bedroom building, isn't it, this?
There's rooms down the side
which are also bedrooms.
They can be bedrooms, they can
be... whatever you want them to be.
In conventional terms,
it's a one-bedroom house.
- A maisonette.
- It's a very expensive one-bedroom house.
I love this view down here.
All the way down that corridor.
And all the way down the side here,
up all these colonnade paths,
we're going to grow robinia and jasmine.
From here, you look across and...?
It's a mirror.
You can see the rooms on the other side.
- Yeah.
- This leads right back to the studio?
This is... This is a very different space,
isn't it, to the house?
It's, um...
a higher ceiling
than the main living area downstairs.
What's it going to be used for?
This is your studio? Photography studio?
A whole sort of multipurpose space.
Is it going to be any
different to over there?
It's going to be
a darker finish.
We're going for...
Slightly based on some Japanese ideas.
This is a stained MDF,
which is very, very stable and solid.
What about the pinhole camera,
because that's the blind, presumably?
- The blind's in, so...
- Yeah? Does it work?
We had a practice go
with sheets of card and paper.
What, here?
- Or on the model?
- No, here, but...
It half worked.
Is there an optimum time of day?
When it's brightest at that end,
like now, for example.
Outside at least,
this house looks nearly finished.
The elegant, super-thin construction,
the gleaming white paint,
and the expanses of glass
all suggest delicacy and lightness.
But there's more.
This is an enclosed
space, which minors itself.
The reflections keep
presenting, like the
camera obscura, new
illusions of more space.
But the greatest triumph of this design
has to be the way the two main buildings,
jewel box and camera,
gaze at each other across the water,
as though in love.
Mike has brilliantly
engineered this relationship
by building the pair
of connecting corridors,
one of which is divided into rooms,
one of which is an open walkway.
These link the main
buildings, and are
sufficiently tall to exclude
the rest of the world.
In this tranquil, poised,
and very romantic space,
you could be almost anywhere in the world.
So, the 21-week super-fast
build on this project
that was originally envisaged,
didn't quite happen like that.
It's a bit like life itself.
Things are difficult,
so building's a really
difficult process,
and, you know... it's a
bit medieval, frankly.
- What have you learned from the process?
- You need an awful lot of energy.
And you need to put in a som of 150%.
If you want to do something
that hasn't necessarily been done,
you need to keep pushing,
and pushing, and pushing.
Sometimes, the harder you try,
maybe the harder it is,
because you're making your own standards.
Do you feel that this is your house?
Or is this a house that belongs to Mike
that he's going to give you?
Um...
It's... our house.
I think it's got his... Mike basically
picked up on all our sort of sensitivities,
and put them in here,
but in his own personal way,
and we're, you know,
pretty much totally in tune.
And I think that has
been so key to this project.
You never really had a fixed
specific budget for this job.
It seems to me
projects don't really work in that way.
You talk about fixed
budget, and that... that is...
- Some do.
- But that is a fairly naive point of view.
It's like, "Which budget
are you talking about?"
The one you had when you started
talking about it, the one it was costed at,
or the first budget when people started
putting real figures together?
Do you know how much this has
cost you so far? Have you kept a tally?
Er, sort of.
- What does it work out at?
- Quite a lot.
I reckon it's cost you £450,000.
- We won't be too drawn on that, but...
- Probably plus the site, I'd say.
But, yeah...
You're kind of in the ballpark, basically.
Yeah, I must admit,
selling's not in our mind at all.
It's like, "Have we actually done something
we wanted to do? Will it make us happy?"
It's the main thing, really.
That's the most important thing.
And the answer to all
that so far is yes, exactly.
We're sort of talking
sometimes, and we think,
"We must be mad to do
this. Why are we doing
this? Our lives could
have been so peaceful,
and we've added on this extra stress."
For two years,
we've been going through all this stress,
but then you think,
"But I really wanted to! I had to do it."
That's the whole creative thing.
You make something cos it doesn't exist.
We couldn't find it, so we had to make it.
Some might label this house
a modernist, impersonal glass box.
But forget the labels. It's actually
very personal to Coneyl and Sarah.
They see it as a simple,
private, modest home.
More importantly, they
can now recognise it as
the space they've always
dreamed of living in,
and Mike's genius has been
to deliver them that intimate dream.
It don't come cheap, it don't come easy,
but it's well worth the wait.
When you come in,
it starts to reveal itself.
The more you get to
know it, the better it gets.
It feels like the place
I've always imagined to live in, and be in.
It feels natural to be here.