Green Lodge
Green Lodge
Set quietly into the edge of Putney Heath, Green Lodge is a low-rise dwelling shaped as much by its landscape as by its architectural ambition. Rather than asserting itself above its surroundings, the house is drawn into the ground, allowing it to sit comfortably within a sensitive and tightly constrained site in Roehampton Village.
Planning considerations and the proximity of neighbouring buildings demanded a restrained response. The solution was a carefully calibrated massing strategy that reduces the building’s perceived scale while unlocking a rich and generous internal arrangement. By lowering much of the accommodation below ground level, the house maintains a modest presence within its setting while opening itself internally to light, views and carefully framed moments of connection to the landscape.
The project embraces the complexity of its context. Mature trees surround the site, and the architectural character of the area ranges from Gothic Revival to Victorian, Arts and Crafts and contemporary interventions. Green Lodge responds not by imitation, but by establishing a clear and modern architectural language that is grounded in proportion, materiality and craft.
The building is organised around a clear structural and spatial logic. Two fair-faced concrete spine walls divide the plan into three distinct bays, shaping both the internal layout and the external form. Above, an asymmetric vaulted roof gives the house its defining silhouette, while internally it sets up a series of secondary geometries that inform the placement of rooflights, joinery and key spatial moments.
Clad entirely in larch, including the roof, the house reads as a singular, sculptural form. Over time, the timber will weather and soften to a silvery tone, allowing the building to further embed itself within the wooded landscape of the heath.
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The Client Brief
Green Lodge was an immensely rewarding project to deliver. The client, one of our long-standing and trusted contractors, presented us with a brief that was at once liberating and challenging: “Do whatever you want, but it has to be quick.” With that in mind, the design process began at full momentum from the outset.
A Stair As Architecture
The stair is conceived not simply as a means of movement, but as a key architectural element that articulates the building’s design language. Positioned beneath the large rooflight, it becomes a vertical thread that connects all levels of the house.
As light filters down from above, the stair and adjacent walls animate throughout the day, reinforcing the sense of depth and continuity between ground and subterranean spaces. In this way, circulation becomes spatial, sculptural and integral to the experience of the house.
Local Setting
Green Lodge sits within an unusually rich architectural and natural context. A Gothic Revival church lies to the south, while the surrounding streets include Victorian villas, Arts and Crafts houses and more recent residential buildings. The proximity of Putney Heath and the density of mature trees give the site a distinctly landscape-led character, one that strongly informed the scale, form and material choices of the design.
The Art of Artificial Light
Artificial lighting is carefully integrated to reinforce the architectural geometry, with concealed troughs, linear elements, and feature pendants used to align with walls, slots, and rooflight forms. By night, light becomes a material in its own right, enhancing depth, warmth, and atmosphere while maintaining the clarity of the open-plan spaces.
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Concrete Spines
Two fair-faced concrete spine walls run through the length of Green Lodge, forming the building’s primary structural framework. These spines break the plan into three distinct bays, reducing structural spans while establishing a clear spatial order.
Rather than being concealed, the concrete is expressed and celebrated. The spines reveal themselves in every room of the house, providing continuity, texture and a sense of permanence. As both structure and finish, they anchor the architecture, allowing other elements to remain restrained and precise.
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Modern Yet Warm
While clearly contemporary in its expression, Green Lodge avoids sterility. Material choices, natural light and carefully considered proportions give the house a warmth and calmness that make it feel grounded and lived-in rather than overtly formal.
Clean Lines with a Clear Purpose
Every element of Green Lodge is driven by intent. Structure, form and material are closely aligned, resulting in a house where clean lines and strong geometry are not decorative, but purposeful. The outcome is a restrained and confident piece of architecture that is both highly resolved and deeply connected to its place.
An Overall Architectural Identity
Green Lodge is defined by a singular and consistent architectural identity, expressed seamlessly across interior and exterior spaces. From the outset, the project was conceived as a complete and unified whole, where structure, material and proportion work together to create clarity rather than hierarchy.
Materials are deployed with consistency and discipline throughout the building. The fair-faced concrete spine walls thread vertically through the interior and reappear externally as horizontal bands that articulate the building’s levels. These elements provide continuity between inside and out, reinforcing the sense that the architecture is read as one continuous composition rather than a series of discrete rooms.
Timber plays an equally unifying role. Bespoke timber frames wrap every window reveal, internally and externally, creating depth, warmth and a precise edge between building and landscape. The larch cladding that envelops the exterior is carried through into the interior design philosophy, where the same timber language is repeated in every piece of joinery. This repetition is not decorative, but intentional, allowing the material palette to quietly bind the spaces together.
A Quiet Geometry
At the heart of the house, the kitchen is fully integrated into the architectural form. Housed entirely within the vaulted volume, it sits centrally within the plan, present but understated. Rather than dominating the space, it engages in a quiet dialogue with the surrounding rooms, reinforcing the calm and balanced character of the interior.
The kitchen island is positioned precisely beneath the largest rooflight, anchoring the space both spatially and visually. Above it, a bespoke lighting bar articulates the volume, carefully aligned to sit one third of the way through the rooflight, subtly referencing the golden ratio. This proportional logic extends throughout the building: the overall plan is divided into three primary sections, and the vaulted volume is further subdivided to form an asymmetric triangular geometry, again derived from golden ratio principles.
Throughout Green Lodge, no single element competes for attention. No space is overtly dominant, and no material claims primacy over another. Instead, structure, light, material and proportion work in concert. The result is a series of clear, carefully considered spaces and crafted details that all speak to the same architectural identity — quiet, confident and deeply resolved.
Precision Joinery
Set against the robustness of the concrete structure, bespoke joinery brings warmth, refinement and human scale to the interiors. Carefully detailed and tightly integrated, the joinery is aligned to the building’s underlying grids, reinforcing the clarity of the architectural language. Storage, thresholds and built-in elements are resolved as part of the architecture rather than applied afterwards, ensuring that each piece has a clear purpose and place within the whole.
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The Quieter Moments
Away from the primary living spaces, the same architectural language continues with a more intimate tone. Bathrooms and WCs are treated with the same level of care, combining exposed concrete with bespoke joinery, pastel pink large-format tiling, and a finely detailed waffle oak ceiling that lights up to bathe the room in a soft, daylight-like glow, bringing warmth and texture to otherwise robust spaces.
Bedrooms are organised around the concrete spine walls, with built-in beds, desks and storage fully integrated into the joinery. In the children’s rooms, the architecture adapts to daily life, with wardrobes transforming seamlessly into workspaces. Carefully framed views out to the surrounding trees, and down into the sunken bedroom courtyards, reinforce a quiet connection to the landscape, allowing these spaces to feel calm, grounded and deeply considered.
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Integrated Craft
Architecture, artwork and building services are carefully interwoven throughout Green Lodge. Bespoke artwork by Matthew Withers is incorporated into the fabric of the building, including a piece that discreetly doubles as a cooling grille for the air-source heat pump. This layered approach reinforces the idea of the house as a crafted object, where function and expression are inseparable.
Cascading Light
Despite much of the private accommodation being located below ground, every room within Green Lodge benefits from natural light. South-facing lightwells line the rear of the house, bringing daylight deep into the subterranean bedrooms and bathrooms while providing each room with its own sheltered external terrace.
At the heart of the plan, a large rooflight above the stair draws light down through the house. This vertical shaft of daylight cascades from roof level to the basement hall, animating the circulation spaces and ensuring that even the deepest parts of the plan feel open, legible and connected to the sky above.
