We gained planning consent for this 450 sqm new build sustainable house near Farnham, in the Planning district of Waverley Council. The new house replaces a post-war chalet style dwelling with a bold contemporary structure, designed to meet the client’s brief of a highly sustainable modern home, optimising the site and its views. We required careful negotiation with the planning department, as well as neighbours; and several applications to gain consent. The key criteria for consent was that the new house was not ‘materially larger than the replacement dwelling’. The house is conceived as a timber clad first floor volume visually ‘floating’ over a predominantly glazed ground floor rear. A double height living space projects to the rear and bisects this volume, framing the views of the site and the distant countryside. A kitchen, dining room, playroom and study provide the primary accommodation to the rear, serviced by store, plant room, utility, WC and cinema room to the North/front of the house. The front elevation is a more solid masonry structure at ground level and timber above. Five bedrooms are provided at first floor level, including a master suite on the East end of the building, complete with its own terrace. An attached annex contains 2 bedrooms and living space. Ancillary buildings to manage the woodland and a replacement swimming pool are also proposed for the site. A carefully hard-landscaped garden designed by Alladiosims garden designers will integrate the building into its surroundings, and blur the line between indoor and outside living spaces. The scheme provides a series of terraces, bbq and seating areas, with retaining walls filled with wild flower planting cascading down to a new replacement swimming pool.