A MILLION pound “sliding home” designed to adapt to changing seasons has been listed for sale a decade after winning a Grand Designs award.
The three-bed home in Huntingfield, Suffolk, features a wooden outer shell that slides away to reveal a glass conservatory-like structure.
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Footage shows the glass-fronted conservatory area sheltered by its innovative shell until the walls and roof slide backward to fully expose it to the sun.
The six-minute transformation reveals an open-air bathroom on the first floor and a previously covered courtyard.
By the end of the transition it sits over a detached annex which contains the third bedroom and another living area.
The architect behind the design, Alex de Rijke, described the moving shell as “like wearing a Puffa jacket” that can be taken away to let heat into the home and put back on to trap it in.
The unusual home, which won Grand Designs’ Home of the Year award in 2009, was listed for sale at £1million on Rightmove last week.
It’s like wearing a Puffa jacket
Alex de Rijke
Alex said: “It allows you to have the best of both worlds, shelter or openness.
“The basis of the design is that you can transform a house in many ways. You can put the insulation where you need it when you need it.
“It differs from most designs that are fixed where you have to assume that the climate is the same all year round. This structure is like wearing a puffer jacket.”
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He said the glass home was designed to let anyone living there enjoy the beautiful surroundings.
He added: “An all-glass house would get too hot or too cold, but this design makes it possible.
“It’s not only about thermal control. It’s the joy of transformation. It’s not a static object. Everything changes because the roof serves to connect or disconnect the buildings.
“The perfect person for this house would be someone who not only understands it but looks after it and isn’t afraid to contact me in order to make changes if they want to.”
Alex claims the solar and wind-powered home doesn’t need to take any power from the national grid and the innovative shell can even be removed completely to make a “free-standing barn”.
The 60-year-old said the original owner, who built the home to his design, wants to retire to a house in a nearby town that has less land to manage than the current three-and-a-half-acre plot.
A description of the surrounding land reads: “Positioned in the heart of the rolling East Anglian countryside, it is set in three and a half acres of bucolic gardens, orchards and meadows.
“The house has high-specification eco-credentials at its core, creating a radical and responsive modern way of living.”
Alex, a director at dRMM Architects, was a judge on Channel 4’s Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker in 2021 where carpenters competed against each other in a series of challenges.
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This post first appeared on thesun.co.uk
