Winner of the RIBA House of the Year Award 2017, Caring Wood is a contemporary residential home that has clear links to the rural vernacular of its location. The brief to executive architects Rural Office for Architecture and MacDonald Wright Architects was to create a multi-generational family home, that allows spaces for intimacy and privacy, as well as places for congregation.

The building’s most prominent features: the four sculptural towers, were designed to emulate the kilning hops in the region. Internally, these towers create ascending channels in need of natural light. The inclusion of rooflights onto these towers was essential to the design to deliver shafts of light into the spaces below.

Over several months, as the project progressed, our design team, were on hand to develop the design of the five Plateau Rooflights, with their hybrid design, combining the traditional baseplate of The Conservation Plateau, with the sleek, edge-to-edge glazing of the Neo Rooflight.

Owing to the varying angles of the rooflights, the final effect of the internal aesthetic is dramatic, with light-filled spaces that create their own moving works of art, changing each day depending on the weather, the sky above and the position of the sun.

Photography by James Morris.