Jacob’s Ladder, the first stand-alone house built by this practice has been put on the market fifteen years after it was built. In a special article in the Sunday Times Property Supplement it was described by Kevin McCloud as “The only house in the whole country that takes my breath away… This is how 21st-century rural houses should be designed,”
Author and Cambridge academic Mary Ann Steane has written on the Chapel’s “lyrical embodiment of liturgy and light” in an article published in Architecture Today. Dr. Steane previously included the Carmelite Monastery project in her book ‘The Architecture of Light’. The article in Architecture Today elucidates on the Chapel’s filtering of natural light through the internal timber structure, as a means of tying the building to its surroundings.
“On a sunny day the upper surfaces become an animated embroidery of light and shadow in tune with the surrounding windblown foliage, but even on a dull day the way that light is held within the tall enclosure is critical to the project’s narrative of tethering.”