Main author
Michael BrooksA House for Essex
See the full Unusual Building of the week series here.
A House for Essex, also known as ‘Julie’s House’, is a conceptual holiday home located at the end of a secluded cul-de-sac in Wrabness, Essex, overlooking the River Stour.
Commissioned by the philosopher Alain de Botton as part of his Living Architecture series, it was created by the Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry in collaboration with the architecture studio FAT.
The house is a ‘mausoleum’ for a fictional Essex woman Julie Cope, which was built by her husband after a tragic accident. In this sense, it has been described as the ‘Taj Mahal of Essex’.
Completed in 2015, after five years in the making, the house comprises four incrementally-smaller sections with a copper-clad roof based on the complex pitches of medieval stave churches, with each of the segments expressed externally as a volume in its own right..
The outer structure is covered in green and white tiles and elaborately decorated with ornaments including a wheel, a large ceramic egg, an aluminium weather vane, and thousands of ceramic nipples.
The interior is dominated by similarly elaborate iconography depicting the fictional Julie as a saint, with mouldings, mosaic floors, tapestries, balconies, and decorative timber, ceramic pots, statues and glazing. There are also a number of art works by Perry, celebrating the ‘history and psyche of Essex.’
After featuring as the subject of a Channel 4 documentary in 2015, the house is open to the public for short-stay holiday lets through ballot selection.
[edit] Find out more
[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings Wiki
- Britain’s greatest maverick building.
- Building of the week series.
- Dancing House, Prague.
- House Attack.
- Little Crooked House, Poland.
- Mimetic architecture.
- Nautilus House.
- Plug-In to Housing.
- Schuppen house.
- St. Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow.
- The Hole House.
- Unusual building design of the week.
- Upside Down House, Poland.
- Watts Towers.
- Y House.
[edit] External resources
- Living Architecture – A House for Essex
Featured articles and news
Do you know your Rococo from your De Stijl, your Gothic from your Post-modernist?
May outlines a new funding strategy for housing associations and says the 'stigma' of social housing needs to end.
RIBA launches a consultation on a new Plan of Work for Fire Safety.
This article offers some basic rules to follow when writing your next specification.
The iconic Mackintosh Building will definitely be rebuilt, board chairwoman confirms.
The machinery used to fashion stone has changed dramatically - and so have the products.
This type of pile provides support to the building, as well as acting as a heat source and a heat sink.
Why investors are adopting the SDGs and why civil engineering could be crucial for delivering them.
Read about all the winners from the London ceremony of CIAT's 2018 Architectural Technology Awards.
How do you find the right stone to conserve historic buildings?
Appointment agreements often include a ‘scope of services’ setting out the consultant's performance on a project.