The Economics of the Ideal Villa

…or In a Recession Classicism is King

Is it a sure sign of a housing market in crisis when innovative design gives way to a rather more bankable product? 2001, perhaps in retrospect the high-water mark of Cool Britannia, saw Kathryn Findlay of Ushida Findlay Architects win a RIBA competition for the design of a new country house. Her starfish inspired Grafton New Hall offered the prospect of a contemporary (if private) landmark. Seven years on, and in more chastened financial circumstances, the news emerges that an altogether more familiar design is to be built by Robert Adam Architects. As Edina Clouds (we kid you not) a correspondent to the always finely attuned Manchester Evening News remarked: yet another example of excess and bad taste

To which project is she referring?

The Independent: Dead in the water