These explore the vernacular tradition of timber-framed buildings, often in cluster and courtyard form, each project evolving in the details from earlier work, but sharing a core idea for the house as a permeable, flexible interface between indoors and outdoors, as a series of linked pavilions, integrating garden settings within the experience of dwelling house form. In every case the garden and dwelling are conceived as one continuum, drawing the site in its entirety and beyond into the overall composition.

The building form evolves as an accumulation of sculptural elements, often referencing an association or memory connecting the project with its past or a theme relating to its setting or functional origin. The resulting lyricism lends a narrative aspect to the experience of a place. The tectonic possibilities of masonry construction deliver ‘carved’ space, grounding the buildings often as a setting for rhythmic ‘groves’ of timber columns and screens. The idea of “caves and trees” is a recurring motif. Also common, is the importance of a pivotal, ‘great space’ ordering and generating a hierarchy of scale to accommodate the transitions between larger gatherings and intimate seclusions. The celebration of building craft is seen in the bespoke workings of timber, stone, copper, and the interplay of textures, shifting between rough-cast rendered surfaces, to the refinement of polished joinery timbers and waxed plaster.