House of the Year 2017: 'Oast House on steroids' named as winner of prestigious RIBA award

A newly built oast-inspired home in Kent has been awarded the hugely coveted House of the Year 2017 award. 
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Lizzie Rivera|Simon Lee30 December 2017

"A collection of oast houses on steroids" has won the prestigious Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) House of the Year 2017 award.

Kent's magnificent Caring Wood was designed to accommodate three generations of one extended family when they meet up for holidays.

This modern vision of the English country house took seven years to build and sits on 84 acres of farmland near Maidstone.

Aside from the main residence, each family has private, separate space the same size as a three-bedroom flat set in their own oast house-style turret.

Caring Wood's design was inspired by a building that is uniquely associated with its location - the oast house, circular buildings designed for drying hops as part of the brewing process that sprang up around the 16th century to process them into beer.

Presenter Kevin McCloud says that while the house is 21st-century country mansion, spanning 1,400sq metres of interior space, it has no pretensions to grandeur, with a relaxed informal feel to the separate dwellings for family members to obtain privacy and even the vast, but beautiful communal areas.

A grand piano sits in a performance space with room for an audience of 50 and there is even an art gallery, but Saunt says of the house: “It is incredibly intimate, no gold taps, no bells and whistles, just a beautiful space that challenges how you can share your home.”

Dismissing the architectural jargon that this house reflects - critical regionalism - McCloud simply concludes: “It is organic, free range and organically grown.”

HOUSE OF THE YEAR SHORTLIST

Riba judge Deborah Saunt also revealed Hidden House as making it on to the shortlist for the House of the Year, on the final episode of Channel 4's Grand Designs House of the Year show.

She said: “It felt effortless because of the natural light that is balanced by those extraordinary roof lights".

It joined The Newhouse for the way it “mimicked farm buildings in a very contemporary way” and The Quest because it is so “brave and ambitious and very rewarding to visit”.

Shawm House, Northumberland’s "upside-down" home was also selected it for its ’truly sustainable, low energy and low impact proposition’.

The final two houses on this year's shortlist were 6 Wood Lane and Ness Point.

6 Wood Lane was described by judges as a ship run aground in suburbia. McCloud likened its interiors to a Jules Verne-style spaceship, ready to take off from the narrow spot between its multi-million pound period neighbours.

Dover's Ness Point, described by judge Michelle Ogundehin as a “modern-day castle, clever, flexible and future proof”.