An Alison and Peter Smithson Design - £895,000
Tisbury, Wiltshire
Freehold
Widely considered as one of the most significant examples of modern architecture, Upper Lawn was designed by the late architects and celebrated pioneers of brutalism, Alison and Peter Smithson. Rooted in a peaceful rural pocket of Wiltshire countryside, the house was conceived as a retreat for creating and communing, providing peace, quiet, and the opportunity to live in rhythm with the seasons. Occupied by the Smithsons between 1959-1982, Upper Lawn came to embody some of their most significant architectural ideas, and was sensitively updated under the expert guidance of Sergison Bates architects. The house is now for sale for the first time in 23 years.
It was 1958 when Alison and Peter Smithson acquired Upper Lawn: a derelict thatched cottage with a demolition order. The house was one of a group of stone buildings set in the remains of an 18th-century farm worker’s yard, once forming part of ‘The Lawns’ on William Beckford’s estate at the edge of Fonthill Abbey, and the original stone wall still forms the peripheral boundary.
The lower half of the original cottage provides a framework for the floor-to-ceiling, timber-framed glass walls above: a spectacular piano nobile with an almost 360-degree panorama across the valley. In an aim to create 'a simple climate house' within which they could experience first-hand the inclement weather conditions of the English seasons, experimentation in solar gain was a significant part of the Smithsons’ process.
