WowHaus

Contact WowHaus
Menu

Featured on Grand Designs

Art deco, Grand Designs, United Kingdom

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey

It was on the Grand Designs show way back in 2017, but you might still recall The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey, which is now the market.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey

 

I have watched the show, but it was a couple of years back, so if any details aren’t quite correct, that’s the reason. But from what I can recall, a couple (both pilots if I recall) fell in love with the art deco style and wanted to recreate it in the modern era.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey

 

The problem was that they had firm ideas on what the outside would look like, but less of an idea of how to work the interior of a 21st-century art deco house. But like most Grand Designs projects, it all came through in the end and what you see here is pretty much what was created 12 years ago.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey

 

If you want to catch up with it, I’m pretty sure All4 will have the episode on the archive somewhere.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey

 

It was a brave move. Creating art deco isn’t easy these days and many examples I have seen over recent years haven’t been great. That’s because it isn’t an easy thing to recreate. It is all about the detail and finding the craftsmen to put in those details, especially when it comes to the exterior. All too often, people just don’t want to spend the time and money putting in those details. That wasn’t the case with this one, with craftsmen brought in to replicate the curves of a 1930s house and add in the wing motif (no doubt a nod to the pilots who built it).

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey

 

Not that the Grand Designs project was an exact copy or time capsule of the 1930s. Anything but. This was a house that was built with one eye on the environment and with all the modern facilities you would expect of a modern-day house.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey

 

Yes, there were (and still are) details that look back to the 1930s once through the front door, which were inspired by the couple’s trip to the art deco haven of Miami. But the end result is a foot in both eras and in places, rather subdued, more modernist than art deco in finish looking at it again.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey

 

Perhaps most interestingly, the one area that really did go heavily down the period route is a part of the house often forgotten by original 1930s designers – the kitchen. Kitchens tended to be hidden away in some of the statement deco houses of the day and if they survive, tend to be small and functional.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey

 

The one here was a design statement, with hand-built cabinetry intended to mimic the curves of the art deco era. I love that ‘clock’ above the cooker, which is a lovely finishing touch and actually doubling as an extractor fan for the cooker.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey

 

As for space, it’s probably more free-flowing and contemporary compared to a lot of original art deco houses, which tend to be a little more uniform and closed off.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey

 

The ground floor is particularly open plan, with that designer kitchen and family room very much at the heart of the house. That space opens to the main sitting room, which can be partitioned if you prefer it to be.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: Art Deco House in Godalming

 

The sitting room features a wood burning stove and corner windows which bi-fold to open the room to the garden. There is also a separate dining room with a vaulted ceiling and a large integral garage.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: Art Deco House in Godalming

 

Some nice details on the ground floor too, including the doors and door handles, that hand-built kitchen cabinetry, a lovely staircase, and a curved glass brick wall.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: Art Deco House in Godalming

 

The house also has six bedrooms (one of which works as a study, along with four bathrooms/shower rooms which were ‘designed to evoke the glamorous side of art deco’ using period style wall tiling and ‘simple yet high specification’ fittings.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: Art Deco House in Godalming

 

As I mentioned earlier, it was also a house that was intended to be environmentally-friendly too, including features such as a rain harvesting system to collect, filter, and re-circulate rainwater, solar panels on the roof for hot water and a heat recovery and ventilation system which utilises the cool and warm air produced in different parts of the building, creating a balanced temperature at low power use.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: Art Deco House in Godalming

 

Outside you will find security gates opening to the drive, which has plenty of parking for several cars if needed, with the double garage with light and power offering even more.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: Art Deco House in Godalming

 

To the rear, a timber deck runs alongside the house and beyond that are the gardens, a mix of lawn, plants and mature fit trees covering something like 0.8 acres.

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: Art Deco House in Godalming

 

I can’t recall the actual cost, but as ever, I’m sure it went over budget. Buying and knocking down an existing house was another cost too. What I do know is the current asking price, which is £1,600,000.

Images and details courtesy of Hamptons. For more details and to make an enquiry, please visit the website.

Update: I have found the episode of the Grand Designs show if you want to watch it, which is available on the Dailymotion website.

If you want more Grand Designs, you can check out my archive of previous features.

 

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: Art Deco House in Godalming

 

Grand Designs: The Art Deco House in Godalming, Surrey
Grand Designs: Art Deco House in Godalming

 

Love reading WowHaus? If you enjoy what you have read or have benefitted from it in any way you can help with the growing costs of the site by Buying Me A Coffee at Ko-Fi. Every penny genuinely helps to keep the site afloat.