Flint House

Flint is a quartz related to obsidian, and is found only in the chalk seam that extends from the south coast to Norfolk. 

Skene Catling de la Peña’s architecture in the grounds of Waddesdon, a large Estate in Buckinghamshire, was generated from this neolithic material, the geology and the immediate ecosystem.

The site is a remote island, a strange, still, anomaly of wilderness within highly cultivated agricultural fields. The Flint House and Annex form two stepped, linear monoliths that appear pulled from the landscape as geological extrusions of infinite age, with the rough texture and rawness of their surroundings. The buildings are both viewing platforms and condensing lenses for the surrounding panorama. The lowest courses of flint are blackest and rough hewn with large gallets in black mortar joints. The walls and terrazzo roofs fade in six coloured strata as the flint progresses up the building, from galleted black through finely knapped grays and finally into courses of long, narrow blocks of white chalk, where the building appears to dissolve into the sky. The watercourse is lined in raw flint nodules, used as it is found in the ground.

The programme moves from the utilitarian and open spaces at the centre of the site to more contemplative, private rooms buried in the existing trees at the far ends of each building. There are plays with old typologies, techniques and materials; the internal ‘river’ reinvents the historic grotto, but using raw nodules of flint, still covered in chalk, with their ancient underwater origins. It carves a mysterious, internal cave through the structure that separates the public spaces from the more introspective, with views across water, through fire and expanded in reflections. The ceiling of black glass mirrors dark water below, creating an impression of infinite space, drawing the landscape deep into the core of the building, mixing memory and desire.

Flint House, Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire, United Kindgom
Program: single-family house and studio
Architects: Skene Catling de la Peña (Charlotte Skene Catling, Jaime de la Peña, Theodora Bowering, Amaia Orrico, Tomoaki Todome, Samuel Chisholm, Tom Greenall, Jordan Hodgson, Daniel Peacock)
Client: Lord Rothschild
Collaborators & Consultants: Marc Frohn
Client Advisor: Colin Amery
Landscape & Garden Designers: Mary Keen, Pip Morrison
Interior Designer: David Mlinaric
Structural Engineers: eHRW Engineers Haskins Robinson Waters, Adam Redgrove, Stephen Haskins
Mechanical + Electrical Engineers: Max Fordham Associates: Kai Salman-Lord
Civil Engineers: Infrastructure
Design Studio: Martin Jones
Quantity Surveyors: Selway Joyce
Partnership: Nick Tarrier, Ed Smith, Hui Meng
Flint Consultant: The Flint Man: David Smith
Lighting Consultants: Spellman Knowlton Lighting Design: Claire Spellman, Christopher Knowlton
Ecology Consultant: Bernwood Environmental
Conservation Services: Chris Damant
Area: 465 + 115 sqm
Completion: 2015