Owner/Occupier/Developer: Ben Shaw
Architect: Dale Rhodes
Conversion and refurbishment of disused Methodist chapel to domestic use including self contained apartment and workshop
This highly inventive conversion provides the owner-occupier with a wonderful open living space, a generous sleeping gallery, two separate bedrooms and a spacious workshop where the owner pursues his interests as a designer and maker.
The house is full of inventive and delightful detail – a semi-circular galley kitchen, an automated wine cellar, a flying staircase and a miniature rooftop garden. The artwork, furnishing and decoration are mildly rebellious and whacky.
The design is the product of collaboration, clearly extremely successful, between the owner and his architect. They clearly share a sense of humour as well as contributing their own particular skills and foibles. The style is contemporary but completely free of the aggressive tone of some minimalist design.
