Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Abigail Hopkins and Amir Sanei are not only architects themselves, they are also the children of architects and grew up in houses built by their parents.\u00a0So the idea of designing their own home had always seemed a natural thing to do.\u00a0\u201cFor an architect, there is always the desire to build your own home, it\u2019s so personal,\u201d says Sanei. \u201cYou want to be able to shape how you live \u2014 but building a house is also a bit of a manifesto.\u201d \u00a0Hopkins had lived in a refined steel and glass house that\u00a0Patty and Michael Hopkins designed in north London in 1976 \u2014 and which is now a listed building. It led to her making her first conscious architectural decision. \u201cThe only partitions between our bedrooms were venetian blinds. When we were old enough, we insisted on proper walls,\u201d she remembers. Her parents went on to build the office block Portcullis House for Members of Parliament; a stand at Lord\u2019s Cricket Ground; Glyndebourne\u2019s new opera house \u2014 and redesign the FT\u2019s own HQ, Bracken House, among much else.\u00a0Sanei\u2019s father, who practised and taught architecture in Tehran, designed their house on the Caspian Sea.\u00a0Initially, Hopkins and Sanei assumed that building a new house for themselves on family-owned land overlooking the wide estuary of the River Alde, in Suffolk, in one of\u00a0Britain\u2019s protected areas of outstanding natural beauty, would be impossible. Their first idea had been to replace a derelict\u00a0lodge on the estate that they had shared with Hopkins\u2019s two siblings and parents for 15 years. When they started the process,\u00a0it was suggested that\u00a0an amendment written into planning law by John Gummer back in 1997 to cover new\u00a0buildings in the countryside might offer a better alternative.\u00a0Gummer, now Lord Deben, was then the environment secretary in John Major\u2019s\u00a0last government. After addressing the imperative need to accommodate farm workers, the amendment adds: \u201can isolated new house in the countryside may also exceptionally be justified if it is clearly of the highest quality, is truly outstanding in terms of its architecture and landscape design, and would significantly enhance its immediate setting and wider surroundings\u201d. It\u2019s a high bar to clear, and one that is\u00a0perhaps even harder to define. Convincing the local authority in Woodbridge that their design qualified took Hopkins and Sanei three years.Gummer was trying to keep the tradition of the country house alive. He described it as \u201cone of the great contributions of Britain to art and architecture\u201d. It was a controversial idea at the time; one planning consultant even described it as \u201celitist\u201d, suggesting it could be \u201ca loophole for a millionaire\u201d.\u00a0The Conservatives were out of office before a single application using the new legislation could be considered. But it was adopted by their architect-friendly Labour successors, who presented it as a test bed for new thinking about building and planning rather than a nostalgic throwback.\u00a0New Lodge, as Hopkins and Sanei\u2019s home is called, certainly looks nothing like the traditional idea of a stately home. Carefully sited on an estate created in the 19th century, it forms a distant satellite to a big house of the kind that Gummer would\u00a0appreciate (though its neo-Georgian facades are a product of the 1950s, when the original Victorian house was heavily remodelled by Raymond Erith, perhaps Britain\u2019s most accomplished 20th-century classicist).\u00a0It is expressly designed to support the outdoor way of\u00a0life, sailing and long walks that Hopkins and Sanei, their five children and an elegant pair of whippets had enjoyed when they lived in the annexe to the main house. Each family member has their own space, connected by an outdoor courtyard to an expansive double-height shared living area. \u201cWe had\u00a0a special way of life here, and the new house allows us to go on living here the way we had done,\u201d Hopkins explains.\u201cWe were very aware of the passing of time and the generations. We wanted to ensure the house could continue to evolve as a multigenerational family home. This is not just a building for now, it\u2019s a home for the future,\u201d says Hopkins.The guiding idea was to update the historic pattern of rural life anchored by big houses with networks of small working farms at a distance. Each farmstead typically had a farmhouse, a collection of barns, stable, cart shed and a granary clustered around a yard. Hopkins and Sanei used this as the starting point for what they call their \u201chousestead\u201d. It too is made of a group of distinct parts, but it is outward looking or \u201cextrovert\u201d rather than an \u201cintroverted\u201d farmstead, as they put it, in order to take advantage of an exceptional setting.\u00a0Split into four wings, each uses an entirely different architectural language. \u201cThere were some members of the planning committee who were convinced that we were trying to pull a fast one and build four houses,\u201d Sanei says.\u00a0The shared living space to the south has fully glazed walls, sheltered under a steep pitched roof, looking towards the river. It was thatched by David Rackham, the 14th generation of his family to work with reed cut from the local Dunwich and Walberswick reed beds. It was a painstaking process that took Rackham six months, working with just one assistant.\u00a0Thatch makes for a roof with excellent insulating properties, and projects out over the fully glazed walls to shield them. In winter, the space is warmed by the sun; in summer, the walls open up for natural ventilation.\u00a0The roof is supported on a structure reduced to a spider\u2019s web of steel, painted a shade of Suffolk shocking pink.\u00a0There is more to Suffolk than picturesque villages and medieval church towers. It\u2019s also a place of mysterious fragments of military archaeology such as the second world war coastal listening stations at Bawdsey and Orford Ness, the pill boxes and gun emplacements\u00a0built to defend the\u00a0 area, and the new agricultural vernacular of corrugated iron. Traces of these local influences in New Lodge make it a kind of architectural collage.\u00a0The utilities and boilers are placed to the north in a hangar-like space under deftly cut\u00a0corrugated steel, like a Savile Row version of a Nissen hut. Sleeping quarters for the five children are in the east wing. Each room has its own bathroom and study space, and is connected by a glass conservatory corridor for insulation. Hopkins and Sanei compare its unpainted chipboard finishes to the aesthetics of a habitable stable, potting sheds or greenhouses. But it\u2019s more comfortable than that might sound. Photovoltaic cells and the solar hot water collector on the roof feed electricity back into the national grid.\u00a0Hopkins and Sanei have their bedroom and a studio in the west wing. The studio is a metal structure\u00a0that Sanei confesses was inspired by a lunar lander. It sits on top of their brick bedroom, and is reached by a particularly elegant folded steel spiral staircase on the outside of the building. The steel was fabricated in Aldeburgh by\u00a0another family-owned business started by Dennis Pegg\u2019s great-grandfather,\u00a0who was a blacksmith and farrier. Pegg specialises in precision engineering and was responsible for making the Aldeburgh \u201cScallop\u201d: artist Maggi Hambling\u2019s tribute to composer Benjamin Britten.\u00a0\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that the children were treated as if they were the client,\u201d Hopkins remembers; nevertheless, \u201cthere were drawings and models they could see, and they helped clear the site. We saw how they enjoyed their previous home here; [living in distinct areas] is second nature for them, we knew it would work. There was a discussion with our youngest about a tunnel from the studio to the bedrooms but, as late teenagers, they were delighted not to be too near to us.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Asking an architect to do something outstanding and exceptional might be to invite them to lapse into pretension and self-consciousness. New Lodge is a much more thoughtful house than that. It is full of ideas about sustainability, design and planning that are applicable elsewhere, while at the same time being closely tailored to a particular place and a particular way of life.\u00a0Deyan Sudjic is director emeritus of the Design Museum in LondonFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Abigail Hopkins and Amir Sanei are not only architects themselves, they are also the children of architects and grew up in houses built by their parents.\u00a0So the idea of designing their own home had always seemed a natural thing to do.\u00a0\u201cFor an architect, there<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":260851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-260850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260852,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260850\/revisions\/260852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}