Contour Lines

Alastair Bowden, director of architectural practice McLean Quinlan, describes this house in Devon as a “gentle giant”. Built on a coastal hillside, it settles into the landscape with quiet confidence, with each of its three storeys revealing new relationships between inside and out, protection and exposure, and light and texture.

Dwellings built on sloping sites often make a virtue of what could otherwise be a difficult constraint, and this site had the added challenge of that slope being gently curved. Sensibly, McLean Quinlan decided that the landscape itself should set the rules, with the building not so much imposed on the site, as growing from it.

“It’s actually quite hard to get the scale of this building,” says director Kaye Quinlan. “Some of the photos might make it look quite grand, but actually, it slots in quite comfortably.”

The house unfolds gradually down the slope, moving from one to three storeys in line with the land. “As you come in, it feels like a single-storey building with a garage – you only really feel the scale of it as you go,” says Quinlan. Rather than construct the house directly against the slope – which would require waterproofing and drainage systems to cope with the direct contact of the hill – the architects designed a retaining wall against the slope and left a slot between the two.

The hierarchy of the layout is arranged around the slope, the curve and the views. The ground floor (the top floor, as you enter) features the main living spaces – open-plan living, kitchen and dining areas, with floor-to-ceiling glazing and front and rear terraces – along with the main, largest bedroom which also has its own balcony. A plant room, yoga studio, snug and four more bedrooms are located on the two lower ground levels, mostly accessed off a corridor that curves along the hilly side of the building. A glazed staircase hall links the floors, featuring an open-tread oak staircase that helps to further disseminate the daylight

The construction itself had a somewhat relaxed timetable, with the homeowners using a close friend and neighbour as a contractor; everyone was happy to take their time and in the end, the project was three years on site. “We just worked directly with [the contractor] from quite early on – after planning permission, but before we really had the drawings together. They started excavating for the footprint while we were working up the detailed design,” says Bowden.

The house is built in Dorset Purbeck stone, some of which makes its way into the interior, too. It’s not the local dark grey granite, which the architects found a little too dark and gloomy, but a material whose lighter colours perfectly pick up on the myriad sandy tones of the beach – and Dorset is still a respectable commitment to cutting down on miles travelled for materials. “It will also age really well, so we’re anticipating that it will blend with the landscape even more,” says Quinlan. The rusticated finish is “not too crisp, which wouldn’t be appropriate for such a wild landscape,” she continues.

The architects were also tasked with designing the interiors, with a recurring palette of stone and oak against light Clayworks plaster walls. They worked with serial collaborators Rosen, based in Cornwall, for the joinery, which was extensive on this project – and they had the added challenge of the curving floorplan offering very few right angles.

The curved lower-floor corridor is entirely clad in oak, offering contrast when you open a bedroom door and the view and daylight immediately jump out at you. Quinlan says that the building’s curve helps to give it its character. “It means that as you move through the building, it doesn’t feel blocky; it’s got a sort of movement. It almost feels like a boat sometimes, or an older building that has its quirks.” She adds that the choice of oak helped to give a ‘beach house’ feeling, but it is also very practical for an active family who enjoy surfing, cycling and walking.

The house offers lots of different ways to engage with the landscape, from the endless skies of the ground floor with its superior vantage point, to the more hunkered-down feeling of the lower floors, within touching distance of a naturalistic coastal landscape design by Devon-based Eden Design. Layered, calm and durable, this house already looks like it belongs – but in years to come will only feel even more at home in this wild landscape.