Caring Wood by James Macdonald Wright and Niall Maxwell has been announced as the 2017 House of the Year by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) for reviving local traditions and handmade materials. 

"Inspired by the traditional oast houses of Kent, the agricultural buildings for kilning hops, Caring Wood revives local building crafts and traditions including locally sourced handmade peg clay tiles, locally quarried ragstone and coppiced chestnut cladding," said by RIBA.

"Caring Wood re-imagines the traditional English country house. It speaks of its time and place: with a contemporary design that has clear links to the rural vernacular', pointed by jury members," added by RIBA.

Image © James Morris

The house comprises four towers, with interlinking roofs like markers in the landscape, echoing other oast houses in the distance.

Images © James Morris

"Beyond the impression of sublime craftsmanship and spatial grandeur this house offers, Caring Wood leads us to fundamentally question how we might live together in the future," said RIBA House of the Year 2017 jury chair Deborah Saunt.

Image © James Morris

"At a time when we are increasingly atomised, individually preoccupied and lost in personalised digital worlds, designing homes where families come together - in their many permutations - is an increasingly important aim," added by Stunt.

"Whilst this might seem to be a particular brief for one extended family, it is one taking huge risks in asking how we collectively might live inter-generationally as social structures evolve."

Image © Heiko Prigge

Stunt pointed that Caring Wood is a brave project offering a new prototype. "Here we find a family enjoying each other’s time and company, but also enabling timeless layers of support to emerge between generations. Grandparents and grandchildren exchanging experiences and enlivening each other’s sense of self, parents finding a place to catch up alone as children play. Siblings together with cousins, building the foundation for mutual support for years to come, the network that builds a strong society of mutual respect," commented by Stunt.

Image © Heiko Prigge

Stunt ends her review that "this intimate house delights in the way it beautifully manipulates space and avoids grandiosity. Unobtrusive within its landscape, it builds on the pattern of settlement centuries old. This is a house for all ages."

Image © Heiko Prigge

"This grand and expansive project is the result of an imaginative collaboration between two small practices. The architects of this highly original building, as well as their client, set out to reimagine what a home could be, raising brave and highly relevant questions about cohabitation and the family home," commented RIBA House of the Year 2017 juror Sandra Coppin.

She also said that "despite its scale and grandeur the lively and sculptural house, manages to feel pleasingly domestic and intimate." 

Image © James Morris

"Created from a rich palette of local materials, this highly crafted building is skillfully detailed and beautifully constructed. It has been created with a stunning sureness and originality," pointed by Coppin.

Image © Heiko Prigge, via RIBA

"Caring Wood invokes a strong sense of place and time through the skilful use of materiality, form-making and craft. The architects have woven together the strands that make a really good building: form, materiality, function and poetics to produce an ambitious, highly crafted and impressive home. Collaborations by their nature force questions into the process of designing and constructing buildings that have resulted in a most extraordinary and distinctive home," summarised by Coppin.

Last but not least, RIBA House of the Year 2017 third juror Sebastian Cox has believed in picking Caring Wood as the House of the Year since it speaks of its time by its abundance. For Sebastian, 'Caring Wood' reimagines the ways we can live with three generations in one country house".

Image © Heiko Prigge

The shortlist and winner were announced as part of Grand Designs: House of the Year, a special four-part Channel 4 TV series presented by Kevin McCloud, Damion Burrows and Michelle Ogundehin. 

While the first episode covered the theme of 'Local Materials', 'Watery Connection' and 'Homes in the country' were the following contents. Seven projects including Caring Wood were shortlisted at the end of each all episodes. The other six shortlisted projects are; 

Shawn House by MawsonKerr Architects,  Ness Point by Tonkin Liu, 6 Wood Lane by Birds Portchmouth Russum, Hidden House by Coffey Architects, Newhouse of Auchengree by Ann Nisbet Studio, and The Quest by Strom Architects. More details are published by RIBA.

Last year, Murphy House designed by Richard Murphy Architects was selected House of the Year 2016, located in Waddesdon, in Edinburgh, UK. Murphy House was presented as ''creating 'tricks, surprises and references to Richard Murphy's own design heroes'' by RIBA. 

The RIBA House of the Year award is awarded every year to the best new house designed by an architect in the UK. It was created in 2001 (and called the RIBA Manser Medal until 2014) to celebrate excellence in housing design.

Top image © James Morris

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