The Dedham Vale AONB is the fourth smallest AONB in England at 90 square kilometres (around 35 square miles). It is essentially a farmed landscape. Boxted village lies within this beautiful landscape which has been a source of creative inspiration for many artists and writers over the centuries, but is most well known for its connections with one of England's greatest landscape painters: John Constable RA.

The brief was to create a single storey, two bedroom retirement home, on a secluded site overlooking a wooded valley, in this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The house was designed to maximise the views over the valley from the entrance hall through to the open plan kitchen, dining and living space.

The bedrooms, bathrooms and study wrap around the main living space which opens out onto a large decked area. From the deck the land slopes gently down to a bubbling stream at the valley bottom.

The site is also home to an abundance of wildlife and the ethos of the design was to ‘touch the ground lightly’ giving the impression that, if the house was removed one day, the site would be undamaged. This ethos was taken through to the proposed factory-made construction method and the various sustainable technologies employed to run the house.

These  renders of the revit model were used to communicate to the client the scale of each room and to indicate the quality of light within the house.