Flood Zone house

Located on the banks of the River Loddon, a tributary of the Thames near Wargrave in Berkshire, the house sits within Flood Zone with a potential flood depth of 1.17m in the worst-case scenario. In order to plan for such a scenario, John Pardey Architects placed the house on stilts which raises the house by 2.2m above the 1:100 year plus predicted Climate Change flood level to make a useful space for casual parking. Approaching the house an open treads staircase climbs up to the entrance deck, a natural iroko front door is sheltered beneath a canopy to provide a welcoming and sheltered point of arrival. Inside, the lobby is generous and immediately offers surprise as it opens onto a raised outdoor court that is framed to the sky and has a staircase back down to the grassy riverbank.
To one side of the outdoor court lies a large open-plan living space with no structural columns to the glazed riverfront, offering unbroken panoramic views of the river. A balcony runs along the length of the living space with glass balustrading, sheltered beneath the over-sailing roof – this roof also over-sails the bedrooms and ancillary rooms, lending solar shading and providing an abstract, reading of the volume as folded planes.
The house has a slender steel-framed structure, infilled with timber framing and insulation, all bearing on piled foundations. Larch cladding, coated with a translucent preservative that slowly reacts to UV light to lend a whitish tone makes the whole form slightly abstract seen against the surrounding nature. Dark grey cementitious boarded infills sit between glazing panels. An earthy grey brick forms the chimney structure and three fins containing service drops.