As a sculptor and designer, Will Lasdun has always been a “hands-on” sort of man, but add to that the fact he’s the son of Sir Denys Lasdun, architect of the National Theatre, on the South Bank in London, and you could say that building is in his blood. Which is just as well, because not only did he design his own home, he also did most of the manual labour himself.

Lasdun and his partner, Lisa Class, were renting a flat in Totnes, Devon, when he came across an odd site that was up for sale. It was a wonky rectangle of three double garages with car parks to the front and back and a road at the side – an island in a sea of tarmac. But Lasdun felt that there was potential for the lopsided site, especially when he climbed up on to the roof and saw that a second storey would have views over the tree tops to an ancient cedar tree and the grassy slopes of the hills on the far side of the river Dart.

Although most people would be hard-pressed to design and construct their own house from scratch, Lasdun was undaunted. His large-scale sculpture and design work brings him into contact with architects and developers, so he has experience in both the aesthetics and practicalities of building.

The house, built in a year, is on two floors. The three bedrooms and two bathrooms are on the ground floor, with glass panel doors opening from the hall on to a small courtyard garden. Upstairs is the large, open-plan living space and kitchen, with Lasdun’s small enclosed office, his son Blaise’s play space, a tiny cloakroom with lavatory and an enclosed utility room. The living space is almost ecclesiastical, with its high pitch roof, unadulterated white walls and uncluttered spaciousness. Light pours down through the overhead glass panels and skylights and at either end the walls consist of glass-panelled doors which frame the views of the landscape beyond.

The floor of the hallway on the lower level is finished in durable, under-heated, local slate tiles and the kitchen worktop, in contrast to the white Ikea units, is covered with Kirkstone slate. The bedroom floors are painted concrete screed. “We like it like this because it emphasizes the studio feel of the place, but if we felt the need to put down a timber covering we could,” says Lasdun.

Upstairs the floors are in a honey tone beech veneer, shipped down from the Natural Wood Floor Company in Wandsworth, South London. The stove in the living room is by Scandinavian firm Hwam. “It is the focus of the ‘snug’ corner,” says Lasdun. “The flue is also a great heat source so rather than duct it straight up and out through the wall I ran it along the incline of the roof in order that the warmth would filter down.”

Lisa Class was keen to have plenty of storage space so that the main part of the living room and the hallways could be kept clear. “We aren’t clutter people, we have never accumulated possessions, and our only real weakness is books,” she says. But storage is slotted in throughout the house. In the sitting room, one side is devoted to shelving and a desk space, but the grey-painted MDF surfaces slide forward to reveal concealed storage for bags, suitcases and boxes. The bedrooms downstairs also have built-in storage, in deep rounded wardrobes. “It was all very angular so I decided to soften the cupboards with curved façades,” says Lasdun.

Although the house is light and attractive even on the dullest day, Class says that it is at night that it comes into its own. “During the day the light tracks its way over the house. It comes through Blaise’s playroom in the morning, then over the rooftop and down to the far side. The light changes through the day and with the seasons, but at night we have uplighters in the stairwell and recessed spots in the ceiling which make focal points within the space.”

But not all the windows are angular: there are two round portholes, one in the front door and the other in the rear elevation of the house. These and the subtly scented cedar-wood cladding on the exterior give a vaguely nautical appearance. “I think they are a subconscious homage to the house’s waterside location,” says Will.

Although the family’s home is now firmly in the country, the furnishings are reminders of the days of metropolitan living. In the main bedroom an Alvar Aalto-style plywood table came from a shop in Shepherd’s Bush, London, and the chairs were hand-me-downs from Lasdun’s mother. The round wood-top dining table was another Shepherd’s Bush find and the black Arne Jacobsen chairs clustered around the dining table were bought at Camden Lock.

Lasdun attributes his hands-on approach to spending holidays at his father’s office. “From about the age of six I would spend time with Dad’s model maker, making balsa-wood maquettes and models, which I loved,” he says. It’s an experience that clearly paid dividends in his new home.

www.lasdun.com

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