A country house by Amin Taha Architects takes inspiration from the Villa Foscari
Inspired by Palladio’s Villa Foscari, Pheasants is a large country house on a 1.75-acre riverside side near Henley-on-Thames. The project began with a RIBA international competition in 2005, in the brief for which the client’s desire for a Palladian villa was stipulated. Amin Taha Architects’ scheme selected from among 67 proposals.
The house and ancillary buildings replace a down-at-heel 1950s wooden bungalow, but a neighbouring grade-I-listed Georgian mansion set a higher bar, and the clients sought a ‘country villa for the twenty-first century’ that would be a family house and support them in old age.
Gatehouse
The site is a small estate accessed by a private road, “not dissimilar to the original bucolic location of Villa Foscari on the River Brenta”, says Taha. The architects suggested a new entrance on the north of the site to establish a single-point perspective on entry, which shifts as the visitor or resident passes through thresholds between ‘public’ and ‘semi-public’ spaces to arrive at the ‘private’ realm.
A ‘gatehouse’ and a linear ornamental pond are positioned to force a flat-on approach to the main villa. More naturalistic planting is retained from there to the riverbank.
“Palladio’s nine-square plan and the Villa Foscari in particular were used to help generate the architecture of our client’s programme”, says Taha. The plan was “disassembled” and the parts “located to three opposing areas of the site, becoming the Gate House, Main Villa and Boat House”. These pieces are “aligned to coincide with external and internal journeys and create a hierarchy of use and spatial definition suited to their needs”.
The site’s location on a floodplain required the main villa to be raised by 1.5m from grade, enabling the architects to set out a piano nobile. Access points expressed as bridges and habitable accommodation rise from this “tabula rasa”, leaving open areas that are “not internal yet by their position on the piano nobile not part of the exterior domain”.
Varying structural systems and materials differentiate the components of the ensemble. White concrete is used for formal areas; cross-laminated timber and corten steel are used for informal, ‘rustic’ accommodation such as the gatehouse, as well as the kitchen and utility rooms of the main villa within which the master bedroom suite is ‘hidden’ at ground level for ease of access – a consideration that also informed the incorporation of level thresholds and wide, latch-less pivot doors.
The project was divided into two phases so that the clients could remain on site throughout, with the gatehouse containing a studio, office, garage and one-bedroom flat completed ahead of the main villa.
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