Kattegat House

The roof is the whole argument. It reaches 2.4 m past the glass — far enough to shade the living room through midsummer, when the sun here barely sets, shallow enough to let the low winter sun reach the back wall, and deep enough that the terrace under it stays dry and out of the prevailing westerly. Everything else on the site follows from that one dimension.

We terraced the approach in low retaining walls and planted them with what was already growing there: marram grass, heather, and the wind-pruned pines we could save. The garden was not a landscape package added at the end. It is the reason the house sits at this level and not three metres higher, where the view is marginally better and the wind is not survivable.

The interior is a single run of rooms facing the water, with the services packed into a rammed-earth spine behind. That wall is 450 mm thick and does the thermal work: it takes the afternoon sun through the west clerestory and gives it back around nine at night, which is when this house is actually used. There is no gas connection and no heat pump running in shoulder season — the wall covers it.