You can really tell when an architect who is any good has done a house: they always try to be a bit different, and it shows. And when the house in question has also won an award from the home of architecture itself — the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) — it really ought to reveal its quality.

So I had no worries, driving along remote Norfolk lanes, that I would somehow fail to spot an award-winning new barn among the local bungalows and farmsteads. Nor did I. Round a corner next to a river and — wham! — there it was.

Only an architect, you see, would make the roof look the same as the walls. It’s the sort of thing they like to do, along with abolishing eaves and hiding gutters. That way, you get a smooth, extruded look.

And although humanity has existed perfectly happily for millennia with roofs made of different stuff from walls, there’s a certain logic to this barn. It’s all-over timber. The timber is only cladding, because the structure beneath is a steel frame. So why not extend the timber cladding to the roof? There is a lot more to this £500,000 home than its external materials, however. Its shape is derived from an original barn in this village on the edge of the Norfolk Broads: it was a very old barn, and very tumbledown. It had been an agricultural building, then an industrial one, put into service as a yard for boat repairs. Then it was bought by the Rogers family, who had owned a house in the village for years. Beyond repair, the old barn was demolished, but its memory lives on in the new structure.

Alan Rogers turned to the barn because he had become progressively disabled by arthritis. His old house was no good for someone in a wheelchair, but it was often full of children and grandchildren of the Rogers clan. So he started looking around the area. Could he build a home that would suit the extended family, as well as him and his wife, Jenny? Yes, he could. Simon Knox and Mary-Lou Arscott, of Knox Bhavan Architects, who had previously designed a garden and a flat for the Rogers family in London, set to on the new site. The first design move might have seemed perverse: where a lot of wheelchair-bound people choose bungalows, architect and client both decided that the main rooms should be on the first floor — that way, with the home on a small headland overlooking the Broadlands, you would get fantastic views all round.

Easy enough to accomplish in a new home: the barn was simply designed with a platform lift next to the straight staircase, just inside the front door. Upstairs is the kitchen/dining area, living room, office, bathroom and main bedroom — all in a row, all opening off a very wide corridor with curving window seats along the south side.

A similar corridor downstairs opens onto four more bedrooms, two bathrooms and a room for games. Corners are curved throughout and openings are wide, with everything designed to accommodate the turning circle of an electric wheelchair.

Because it has all been designed from scratch, none of this is intrusive. Quite the reverse: it’s ultra-designerly.

The main thing, however, is the light: the place is drenched in it. On the top floor, which rises right to the ridge of the roof, the partitions between rooms are of glass above head height. That way, you can see the full 90ft length of the house. On the south side, big windows — especially big in the living area — slide open, while down below, nine pairs of french windows open up the house to the garden.

Rogers shows me all this as he shoots about in his wheelchair at surprising speed.There was a bit of local opposition at first, he says, but now things are bedding down nicely. “This is the first time anyone has tried to do proper architecture in the village for quite some time,” he says. “A red-brick bungalow would have passed without comment. But everyone’s come round to it.”

As for the design, they knew the architects well enough not to query everything. “There was a high level of trust between us from the start,” says Jenny. “And no surprises at all as it emerged. They’re very professional.” With yachts moving lazily on the river below, it’s an idyllic place.

Idyllic is also an apt description for another award-winning timber-clad home this year: the Wrap House in west London, owned by the Brewer family. Where the Norfolk barn is simple, Wrap House is complex — to build, but not to experience, since it all feels weirdly natural.

The architect of the Wrap House, which cost about £180,000, is Canadian-born, London-based Alison Brooks. It is just a rear extension to a double-fronted late Victorian house with a big garden, but while many such additions are merely simple, modernist boxes, this one is a piece of architectural origami.

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