Ansty Plum House is an architecturally significant house and studio in rural Wiltshire that has undergone an impressive retrofit and a bold studio extension. It is a gem, consisting of[...]

© Brotherton Lock & Rachael Smith
Ansty Plum House is an architecturally significant house and studio in rural Wiltshire that has undergone an impressive retrofit and a bold studio extension.
© Brotherton Lock & Rachael Smith
It is a gem, consisting of two eloquent and imaginative buildings, commissioned in the 1960?s and ?70?s by Roger Rigby, a former partner in Ove Arup?s office. The first is a one-bedroom house, designed by David Levitt and the second, a studio and garage designed by Peter and Alison Smithson.
This intensive repair, upgrading and re-organising of these buildings has brought about an 80% reduction in its energy use and resulted in a fine family home and equally outstanding studio workspace. © Brotherton Lock & Rachael Smith
The buildings are radically sited on a steep wooded hillside and overlook a collection of 12thC buildings. The brick and timber house has a simple open plan with a singular plane rectangular roof following the gradient of the land. The stone and concrete studio, hedged into the slope, peeps onto an ancient woodland track.
Over the last decades, a number of changes had been made to the house while the Smithson studio had been left derelict having suffered structural failure, water ingress and decay.
Coppin Dockray transformed the...