Falling water 2004

A natural river gushes down from the roof and out through the heart of the house

The first view of the house is of a circular lily pond with four round holes punched out of it

The building’s design is circular, and a large spiral corkscrews through it. The coincidence of these two geometic forms is enough to identify the design as a descendant of the Swiss Re tower in the City of London, and the Greater London Assembly’s City Hall in nearby Southwark. And sure enough, all three were designed by Ken Shuttleworth, the two finished buildings during his time at Foster and Partners and this design at his own practice, Make.

But this one is different. Shuttleworth has made a startling addition to the established formula of circles and spirals, and it lifts the building to a different dimension. That extra ingredient is water – gushing water, and lots of it. And we’re not talking mains tap water, but a full-sized, natural river in the English Countryside.

Now forget traditional water mills or even Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water house in Colorado. Shuttleworth’s project is a private house, and he plans to build it underneath the river at the foot of a steep-sided, wooded valley.

The design works like this. As you approach the house on a ramp, all that is visible is a 30 m diameter circular lily pond fed by a river. The ramp leads you through the edge of this pond then spirals down into it through a wide hole. As you descend, you see three smaller holes scooped out of it, and the rivers gushes through these like bathwater disappearing down a plug hole.

The idea is that you are not living above the river but in it. It should make you feel like being part of the landscape

Ken Shuttleworth

On the floor below, the living accommodation is partly cleaved apart by the river, which reassembles itself beneath the three drum-shaped waterfalls. The river is the central spectacle of the house, as it is bounded on either side by sliding clear-glazed walls. Circular skylights beneath the pond bathe the rooms in underwater sunlight. And in the living room, a large open fire counterpoints the gushing water just on the other side of the glazed walls.

“The idea is that you are not living above the river but in it,” says Shuttleworth. “It should make you feel like being part of the landscape. And you can experience and enjoy the different seasons, as the water flow increases and decreases. So it’s a way of building literally in nature.”

For the client, whose identity is not revealed, Ken’s proposal came as a huge shock. “He had seen my own crescent-shaped house [in Wiltshire] and was probably expecting something similar,” says Shuttleworth. “He had bought the site with an existing house, which he wanted redeveloped. So he couldn’t believe that we moved the house 50 m to the valley bottom. This needed quite a bit of explaining.”

To a family with young children – the client’s offspring are grown up – the central river would be a good way of getting rid of any spare ones. To Shuttleworth, the biggest problem will be how to build the house without destroying the natural landscape it sits in.

Make’s detailed design and specification can be relied on to consume few natural resources. Yet it is the way that it is physically embedded in nature that is the house’s biggest and most exciting innovation.

Project team