D & R in the News
The Moonraker Contemporary new build in Exmouth was featured in the Self Build & Design Magazine ( January 2009 issue) and Grand Designs Magazine (September 2009 issue). D & R Design supplied and fitted the Bespoke Aluminium Windows throughout this stunning four bedroom property in Devon.
Below you will find images and the article writen by Self Build & Design Magazine.
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OVER THE MOON
James Bond fans Paul Butterworth and Dana Schell, have self-built an incredible futuristic eco-home kitted out with enough gadgets to impress even 007 himself.
“When we saw drawings of the round moon-shaped roof, we decided to call the house Moonraker.”
Walk into Paul Butterworth and Dana Schell’s stunning newly built eco-house and you truly feel as though you’ve stepped onto a James Bond film set. Hidden away at the end of a sweeping drive in Exmouth, Devon, the glamorous four bedroom property has been fitted with futuristic fingerprint locks for security and even boasts an underground ‘safe room’ – the perfect place to hide out from marauding villains.
Marble floors are laid throughout the spacious open plan living areas, which overlook the garden through full height windows and folding sliding glass doors. There’s a dream kitchen, fitted with every imaginable appliance, and a glass spiral staircase rises up to a galleried landing which cantilevers out over the double height room below.
Even the lighting can be programmed to pulse and beat in time to the music playing on the sound system, and of course there’s a hot tub outside on the patio just waiting to be enjoyed with a bikini-clad Bond girl and a glass or two of Martini-shaken, not stirred.
‘We’d never really considered building an eco-house until we saw our architect’s plans for Moonraker,’ admits Dana Schell. ‘Paul and I built our previous home, which was a very traditional house, and before that we’d lived in developer-built properties, so this project was a total leap into the unknown.
Paul Butterworth is a builder who has notched up years of experience working on other people’s houses, but even he acknowledges how challenging it was to take on such a complex design on a self build basis.
Not only is the house partially buried into the landscape, but the building is a dizzying arrangement of slopes, angles and curves, all topped off by a circular zinc roof set at a jaunty angle and designed to shade the glass below.
“We both love James Bond films, and when we saw drawings of the round moon-shaped roof, we decided to call the house Moonraker,” says Paul. “It was designed for the site by Paul Humphries, a local architect known for his eco-friendly projects, and Dana and I were very excited about building such an unusual home.”
The couple had discovered their building plot through an estate agent, and were instantly impressed by the private one third of an acre site, which made up part of the previous owner’s large garden. Planning permission had already been granted for Paul Humphries’ proposal; an ambitious 300m2 detached house, designed to be partially buried into the sloping site in order not to mar the neighbours’ views.
“We loved everything about the house, and decided not to tinker too much with the plans because they had already been so well thought out,” explains Dana. “The layout remained exactly the same, although we did get additional planning permission to extend the underground garage and build a separate office which doubles as the safe room.” The couple sold their house in Dorset and moved to live with Dana’s mother in Torquay, where they stayed for eighteen months during the build. Determined to tackle as much of the project on a DIY basis as possible, they began working on site – employing a handlful of trusted subcontractors along the way, including a plasterer and plumber.
“We didn’t realise just how difficult the build would be, and one of the biggest problems proved to be the weather,” Paul recalls. “Excavating the site produced around 600 tons of spoil, but heavy rain soon filled up the hole like a swimming pool and we seemed to be constantly pumping out water.”
Paul worked on site every day, with Dana trading her weekends, evenings and holidays for hard manual labour-climbing scaffolding, man-handling sheets of marble flooring and driving the digger. The couple kept one another motivated when things got tough, and Dana took charge of sourcing and ordering materials, fixtures and fittings for the house. Everything has been massively reinforced using steel and concrete to withstand the pressure of the surrounding earth, and the semi-underground masonry structure was extensively tanked, waterproofed and insulated. |
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The stairwell enveloping the glass spiral staircase acts as a supporting spine for the two-storey building, which literally drops down the hillside to open onto a patio and lawned gardens through walls of full height glazing.
Zinc-clad roofs are combined with green roofs, creating areas of sedum and additional outdoor space planted with grass, which may be accessed from some of the first floor bedrooms and effectively become part of the garden. “After discovering how much it would cost to pay a specialist company to install the planted roofs we decided to go on a course to learn how to do it ourselves,” explains Dana, a sales negotiator who sells houses to the armed forces. “The whole build was a very steep learning curve, but doing so much of it ourselves meant we saved a huge amount of money.”
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Not only does the house appear visually stunning, with its combination of planted and zinc roofs, curved and angular white rendered walls and masses of aluminium –framed glazing, it also conceals a number of eco-friendly features. An environmentally-friendly Biotech sewage treatment plan processes and breaks down organic mater, finally discharging purified water, and a rainwater collection system harvests rain from the roofs and stores it underground to be used for flushing toilets and watering the garden.
“I’m a Canadian national, and was familiar with technology such as ground source heat pumps,” explains Dana. “Paul is a traditional builder, however, and was more wary of the concept, but we sourced the heat pump and our underfloor heating from a local company, and they gave us all the back-up that we needed.”
Four hundred metres of pipework were buried I trenches dug along the driveway, and the couple’s plumber completed the installation with technical support from the company. The result is that costs for the house are incredibly low. Paul in now completely converted to the idea of harnessing free energy from the ground, and he and Dana have also fully adjusted to the contemporary, open plan interiors of their new ho9me, after years of living in traditional houses.
“We spent ages visiting self-build houses, surfing the internet and looking magazines for ideas for the interiors, because you can’t just pop out to buy a glass spiral staircase from Jewson,” laughs Dana
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“Although we wanted the house to look glamorous it also needed to be comfortable and hard wearing, because at the end of the day this is our home – even if people think that it’s more like something out of a James Bond film!” |
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