Mimicking the steep tilt of the South Downs’ hills, Cadence, the self-designed family home of architect Adam Richards, is a journey through time. Taking inspiration from the stories which have made up his life, walking through the silky, reinforced concrete halls of this unique home takes guests on a global, and often other-wordly, exploration. One moment you can walk through a scene from sci-fi movie, Stalker, the next a hall of a Venetian hotel where the owners stayed when they first met.
Personal to every last detail and built after years of deliberation, Cadence “is very carefully designed for its site,” said Richards, and although at first glance this new home may look out of sorts with the usual country pile found within West Sussex, its undulating arches and stepped profile has been created to echo two Victorian follies close by. Described by Richards as “a Roman ruin wrapped around a modern concrete house”, Cadence plays with time and style from every angle; modern but with nods to the world’s tumultuous past, soft and playful but standing firm and tall with imposing concrete.
A building of contrasts, the southern aspect, which rises in a grid, represents stillness, while the stepped elevations give a sense of movement within the landscape. Inside, 17th and 18th century tapestries hang from floor to ceiling, punctuated by a set of minimalist artwork by Robert Mangold, “it’s bringing these horizons of time into dialogue as a setting for our lives, because that’s how we live,“ Richards said in an interview with The Modern House, “we live in ongoing, contemporary times, but everything we do is coloured by what’s come before us. So I think trying to find a way of manifesting that context as a setting for life is actually quite important.”
When asked which part of the house was their favourite, the owners replied, “We love that the grandest space in the house is where we cook and eat; this makes even the quickest snack feel special,” and with a kitchen representing both a cathedral-like hall and the antechamber to Tarkovsky’s room where wishes come true in Stalker, every morning cup of tea or rowdy family supper will imprint on the memories of all who get to experience this most exclusive home.
