By Jane Brown
March 2010
Turn End Charitable Trust
Distributed by Trans-Atlantic Publications
ISBN: 9780956495303
127 Pages, Illustrated
$62.50 Hardcover
This book celebrates architect Peter Aldington's three village houses and a garden which were designed and built in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, in the 1960s. The internationally acclaimed scheme won a Royal Institute of British Architects award and the three houses have been designated listed buildings. Exceptional and influential examples of modern architecture, they display compactness and privacy, variety and unity. With words by Jane Brown and photographs by Richard Bryant, the book is a vibrant visual journey through the garden and houses, which constitute a fusion of modernist and traditional approaches. Built in an ancient village, yet making innovative use of concrete, glass and wood, the three houses are enveloped by a glorious varied garden and stand as a fine example of modern architecture which harmonises with its environment.
Here is the full story of how Peter and Margaret Aldington built Turn End and its neighbours, and how the garden was made. The Aldingtons' story is crisply told by Jane Brown, using Turn End's copious archive, endorsed with questions and conversations and many peoples' memories and perspectives. Some time alone with Turn End, house and garden, was also essential research. The result is an adventure story, an exploration of the intriguing processes of designing and making both houses and garden, not forgetting some of the buffetings of fate and officialdom that were met and overcome. The triumph of A Garden and Three Houses is lavishly celebrated in over one hundred photographs in colour by Richard Bryant, who made breaks in his busy international schedule of enormous and exotic buildings to photograph these three small houses and Turn End's garden. He portrays interiors and exteriors, structure, ornament and planting, and all their complementary relationships, in many moods and seasons. Above all, this book, in words, pictures and plans, reveals that the discovery and expression of `the genius' of a place is not dead 18th century art, but can be practised in our day, on an ordinary street. It will inspire everyone who feels that it is time architects turned their talents to housing design once again.
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