The Contemporary Nordic-Style Farmhouse

This contemporary Nordic-style farmhouse brings together refined simplicity, everyday practicality and a deep connection to its coastal setting. Clean architectural lines, a restrained natural palette and warm timber detailing create a calm, light-filled family home that feels both modern and welcoming. Generous glazing and carefully considered materials strengthen the relationship between inside and out, allowing the house to sit quietly within the landscape while offering a relaxed, elegant backdrop for daily life.

Set within a generous garden that between the Sussex coast and countryside, this home is a new contemporary farmhouse designed as a calm, timeless and sustainable family home. The brief called for a house that felt grounded in its landscape: simple, beautiful and efficient, with a strong relationship between architecture, interior design and the surrounding gardens.

The design replaces an inefficient former property with an awkward corridor-led layout and poor energy performance. In its place, the new home creates a more thoughtful response to the site, arranged as two elegant gabled volumes connected by a flat-roofed central link. This composition references traditional farmhouse forms appropriate to the coastal setting, while introducing refined modern detailing, generous glazing and carefully controlled proportions.

Natural timber cladding, installed vertically, gives the house a light and tactile quality, while dark grey aluminium roofs, canopies and detailing define the contemporary architectural language. Timber continues beneath the overhangs to create a seamless material rhythm, softening the building and reinforcing the calm Nordic character of the design. The canopies and articulated volumes help reduce visual impact, provide natural shade and support a passive design strategy.

Inside, the architecture and interior design approach focuses on light, warmth and family living. Full-height windows and doors frame views across the garden, blur the boundary between inside and outside and bring the landscape into the everyday experience of the home. The restrained materials palette, natural textures and open connections between spaces create a peaceful, practical environment designed for slowing down, gathering together and enjoying the coastal setting.

A matching pool house continues the material and proportional language of the main dwelling at a smaller scale. Carefully positioned within the garden, it sits alongside an existing tree and enhances the sense of retreat. In the yoga room, a glazed corner allows the space to open visually towards nature, supporting the client’s aspiration for a home that encourages wellbeing, relaxation and a close connection to the outdoors.

Sustainability was central to the design from the outset. We adopted a holistic, fabric-first approach using SIPs, high levels of insulation and high-performance windows and doors to reduce heat loss and achieve low U-values approaching Passivhaus standards. Compact forms help minimise thermal bridging, while carefully designed overhangs reduce overheating, control solar gain and help manage light spill in line with the sensitive coastal and AONB context.

Renewable technologies, support the home’s energy demand and reduce its environmental impact. The landscape design further strengthens the sustainable strategy by improving biodiversity, protecting wildlife habitats, using local species, reducing water use and creating low-maintenance natural spaces. The result is a beautifully crafted, energy-efficient coastal home where contemporary architecture, interior design and sustainability work together in harmony.