Inside a Minimalist Capsule Home Overlooking the British Coastline

[gentle music]

It's perfectly clear that

for most cognitively modern humans who've lived

for a hundred thousand years, they never had anything

that we would describe as architecture.

And probably just over 10,000 years ago,

they started producing

what we would recognize as architecture.

And the question that I ask is why did that happen?

And what purpose was architecture playing

that hadn't been required before?

Architecture is one of the things

that creates representation of time itself.

What can tell you what a thousand years is like better than

a city or what can tell you that you are connected

to your ancestors and that you pass on values

to your ancestors, to your children better than

the continuity of the built fabric of a place.

It seems to me that this representation

of deep time is a fundamental vocation of architecture.

[gentle music]

I'm Niall McLaughlin and I'm the architect

of Saltmarsh House.

We were contacted here at the studio by a woman who asked us

to design what was a tiny pavilion house

on the coast on the Isle of Wight.

We wanted to make a structure

that was incredibly lightweight

and so we began to think about this kind of cat's cradle

of very lightweight steel tubes

that would hold up an overhanging roof.

That was really the beginning of the idea of the project.

So you have this roof here that's made of these sort

of pyramidal roof lights,

and then you can see this kind of cat's cradle structure.

And then when you look along the length of it,

you see that simple A-B rhythm.

So it's A-B-A.

And this A is the same as that A,

but this one has got all the solid objects tucked

underneath it and this has got the veranda

that opens out towards the C.

And then you have this central space

that balances those two things out on each side.

And then you have this little row

of boxes which are tucked in like pieces of furniture,

the bathroom, the bedroom, and the kitchen.

And each one has its own separate box,

which we'll then look out of the woodland.

[gentle music]

You walk across this bridge that connects the land

with the pavilion

and you arrive on this deck, which is the first bay really

of those four bays of the main structure.

And it's also the one

that shows you most clearly what the structure is.

You got those four poles

that are connected together at regular intervals,

giving you quadruple column,

which holds up the roof structure above it.

You get this amazing view across the marshes

with the high tide, you get this amazing reflective

surface bringing in the light.

You have this amazing wildlife here with the birds come

and go, which is an absolute beautiful thing to witness.

[gentle music]

And here we are in the main space,

that's the dining area, all of these large roof lights

and back there is the seating area.

There's the fireplace

with your three large windows looking out across

the marshes and the harbor.

So the three large guillotine windows are all motorized.

You can open and close them with these three switches here.

So you simply flip the switch

and then those windows start opening.

Each of the panes weighs about half a tonne

and they're counter weighted with the same amount of metal.

So the the motor that opens

and closes them has to do just a little bit of work.

A large part of making this internal space really bright

and light is having those six triangular roof lights

that sit above the seating and a dining area here.

Now that the sun's come out, we get a bit of benefit

of it coming through and washing through the space.

So you have this ever-changing play of shade

and light together with the sea coming in

and out, which makes the space so special.

Also from the inside you can really read those four bays

of roof structure each

with this pyramidal roof sitting on top,

which references the repetitive boathouses from across

the harbor, but also the Victorian greenhouses that used

to exist at top of the hill from the Victorian times.

Over here, we've allowed for these wooden shutters

to be integrated in the back of of those benches.

So they come up to a certain height.

They still allow plenty of light to come in

and for you to be able to see out

and be aware of the weather and the landscape around it,

but it offers you a certain degree of privacy.

All these shutters are decorated

with these beautiful hand-painted wallpapers

that will make a connection between the shutters

and the landscape beyond.

When you're looking at the grasses,

you sort of feel reminded of the marshland behind it.

And here you have the seating area with a couple

of sofas and armchairs creating a nice

and cosy atmosphere for a cold winter evening

when you know, you can light a fire sit here

and just being in the space,

the fireplace sits on a granite plinth,

which connects it back to the earthwork

and to the landscape outside whilst also being

just a non-combustible hearth to the fireplace.

So here you have the bathroom pod

with the shower on the left

and the bathroom over here.

All the doors are sliding doors.

Open the window

which opens fully, and you get the view of the garden

and the woodland beyond.

And for a little bit of additional privacy,

there's also shutters here that then have from turn

mirrors fitted to the inside.

So this is the middle pod, the bedroom

with two doors either side.

Plenty of inbuilt furniture here.

This is the only bedroom in the pavilion is mostly used

by either the clients themselves

or guests who stay down here.

It's an amazing place to be close to the garden,

but also extremely close to the water.

Just like the bathroom window, this opens fully up.

So if you wanted to, you could have the completely opening

window to the garden space.

So here you have the kitchen pod

with everything.

A small kitchen needs a dishwasher

and fridge over here,

and otherwise there's just plenty of storage.

Again, the window opens fully,

there's a little step outside.

So if you need to nip in and out of the building,

it's almost like your back entrance door as well.

[gentle music]

It is always amazing to come to a finished building

and to experience a space

that one has thought about in a lot of detail before.

We've been studying this building so much in the office

and we sort of almost knew every nut

and bolt in the building,

but when you actually walk into the space,

it's always different.

And it's been a great pleasure

to come into this basement when it was finished

because it felt in some ways

exactly the way we wanted it, we designed it.

[gentle music]

[upbeat music]

You can see in this image here we have a simple detail

like this at the edge of the building where the width

of the window frame separates an internal

and external structure.

So this cat's cradle you see here is brought down

to the ground on the inside.

But equally if you looked on the outside,

there's a paired column on the other side that allows you

to see it being brought down to the ground.

But for architects like us who are interested in detailing,

the proof of the concept always comes down to

what do you do when that's then turning a corner?

And so we were really thinking about this as a problem

that we couldn't resolve.

And it just happened that I was on

a field trip with my students.

We went to Jaipur in India

and we visited this beautiful place on the Amber fort,

which is called the Elephant Pavilion.

I realized that this 16th century structure had exactly

the same principle of paired columns.

So I lay on the floor of the pavilion

and made a drawing of the elephant columns.

And what I realized was not just

that they had developed this beautiful architecture

of paired columns,

but that when it comes to the corner,

they had turned the pair into a four.

And this gave us the principle which we used

for turning the corner in the building.

And one of the things that we had to do to achieve that

was to get a right angle piece of triple glazing.

It means when you're standing inside the building,

you just get this tiny glimpse past the column

of light coming through.

We realized that we designed a building

that would be a real challenge for most builders to build,

and we were fortunate to work

with some extraordinary builders,

it's a company called Millimeter,

who are based on the south coast of England.

And you can see the complexity

of this seven-way intersection of tiny thin rods.

And they were able to use robotic tools

in their own workshop to build from those.

It was an interesting process

where the whole building was mocked up in the workshop

before they brought it to site.

So they knew that what they were constructing

would be possible to do.

That really helped because the site is a bird sanctuary.

For a lot of the time,

we had an ecologist on site with a notebook wandering

around telling the builders the impact

that their work was having on these rare species of birds.

And so the builders had to be super careful at every turn

that they weren't anything to disrupt the mating

or nesting of these birds at different times.

So having had the opportunity

to completely rehearse it beforehand

and then make it again on site was a very good way

of doing it because we were able to retain a degree

of tact in relation to this very fragile wildlife.

The landscape around it hasn't been created yet,

so that sense of it having its back

to woodland will make a big difference to the way

that you understand the building.

And I like to think about it as being a bit less kind

of Machinian precise and precious

when I go back in 20 years time,

but has got the light of the leaves coming through trees

and a sense of having aged into its place.

Maybe it would feel more ordinary,

less so obviously spectacular

and more kind of balanced with its environment.

But that always takes time.

I think it's really curious, when you work on a building

for quite a few years and you've been working on models

and drawings and details, the project becomes a long litany

of small decisions that have to be resolved,

but it becomes a procedure of working

through small things in order to achieve a larger thing.

And for me, one of the most extraordinary moments is when

everything that you've brought together

through a million small decisions is suddenly

just a piece of the world.

And I've never really quite got over that.

What I'm always looking for is to have the opportunity to go

to the building and to try

and find some moment of stillness that I can just sit in it

and try and be there and say, is this what I intended?

Does this feel right?

And then watch the light of the day changing.

And at that moment as an architect, you have to just let go

of it and say, Bye, it's not mine anymore.

Offer those into the world.

And then once I've done that, I never think of the buildings

as being particularly something that I made anymore

or have my authorship.

I just think of them as being bits of the world.

[gentle music]