About Living Architecture

A Room for London is major new collaboration between Living Architecture and Artangel

Living Architecture is a social enterprise dedicated to the promotion and enjoyment of world-class modern architecture. It has asked a series of great architects to design houses around the UK, and made these available to rent for holidays all year round.

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The Balancing Barn, a few miles inland from the Suffolk Coast

A Room for London is part of Living Architecture’s ongoing commitment to offer the public opportunities to enjoy exceptional contemporary architecture in unusual settings. The organisation, founded by Alain de Botton, was created from a desire to shift perceptions of modern architecture. Living Architecture wants to give people a chance to experience what it is like to live, eat and sleep in a space designed by an outstanding architectural practice. While there are examples of great modern buildings in Britain, they tend to be in places that one passes through (eg. airports, museums, offices) and the few modern houses that exist are almost all in private hands and cannot be visited.

There are four other Living Architecture houses open at present: The Balancing Barn and The Dune House in Suffolk, The Shingle House in Dungeness, Kent and The Long House in Cockthorpe, Norfolk. All are in stunning locations and are both beautiful examples of modern architecture and practical houses that people can enjoy for holidays.

Living Architecture’s mission is first and foremost about education, and enhancing the appreciation of architecture. But we also hope that people will have an amazing holiday experience, a stay that’s different from other holidays they have taken in the UK. Living Architecture is making available a standard of house unusual for the UK rental market (where the ancient cottage has until now been the norm), with the best of contemporary materials and technologies chosen by our architects. Attention has been paid to every detail – from the shape of the roof, to the lamps, bed linen and cutlery that’s been chosen for each house.

 Living Architecture is aware that the history of architecture has always been capable of being shaped by a few great domestic buildings – Chiswick House, the Schröder House, the Villa Savoye, to name just a few – and it is with such ground-breaking works in mind that the organisation approaches the commissioning of its buildings. The design of each house is experimental and creative, pushing at existing boundaries. Much emphasis has been placed on ecological considerations. The houses hope in their own ways to be as innovative as the famous Californian Case Study houses of the 1950s and 1960s, which set trends others followed.

Great museums and civic structures have in recent years provided examples of how a single building can reinvigorate an entire district. On a smaller scale, Living Architecture’s houses strive for a transforming effect on the places in which they are sited. The houses form a chain of living, inhabitable museums in the landscape.

To read more about Living Architecture and to book one of its houses, visit www.living-architecture.co.uk.

The Balancing Barn was recently shortlisted for the RIBA Manser Medal 2011 (and was winner of the Public Vote for the Manser Medal).

“Living Architecture offers an uplifting alternative to the Landmark Trust's traditional holiday lets” –The Observer

“One-off statement homes at an affordable price” – The Independent

“Design for Living. Modernist vacation homes with a mission” – The New Yorker