Meunier House And Attached Raised Terraces

Meunier House and Attached Raised Terraces

Private house designed and built in 1964 by John Meunier for himself, located off Main Street in Caldecote. The house is constructed of exposed Fletton brick with flat roofs and is a single-storey structure. The plan comprises two intersecting squares of different heights: the higher square contains the living, dining and kitchen areas, while the lower square houses an enclosed study and bedrooms, with the service core positioned at the intersection. Both squares sit upon a raised brick plinth, itself square in plan measuring 40 feet by 40 feet, which forms two terraces.

The facades present a carefully considered sequence, progressing from a completely blank north-facing elevation to a totally open south-facing elevation of the higher block. The windows are of timber with opening lights measuring three feet square, positioned at consistent heights across both volumes. The higher spaces feature full-height glazing. Interior surfaces expose the Fletton brickwork throughout, except above working and washing surfaces where white-faced tiles or mirrors are used instead. The floors are laid in buff quarry tiles, while the ceilings expose Columbian pine, with built-in cupboards, shelving and fixtures of pine and beech.

Meunier designed this house while working as a Junior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Cambridge University; it was his first significant building. The project became possible through a University policy that granted second mortgages to faculty members, enabling construction without available financial equity. Despite its austere character and economical construction, the house makes deliberate architectural feature of its cheap materials. Meunier himself described it as "an English Brutalist version of a Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian house". However, the building displays considerably more geometric rigour and classical proportion than the work of his contemporaries; this severe logic is what gives it architectural interest and anticipates his later and better-known collaborative work with Barry Gasson, which culminated in the Burrell Museum in Glasgow.

The design reflects Meunier's experience of working at Harvard with Serge Chermayeff and Christopher Alexander, and the influence of their book Community and Privacy (1962). The house was designed using a proportioning system based on both the nine-inch brick module and a version of Le Corbusier's Modulor. The height achieved through this system and the full-height windows designed according to its proportions create a considerable sense of space within a tiny footprint. In Meunier's own words, he sought to "achieve some sort of nobility—to create out of space, not a cosy living room, but something that elevates rather than comforts."