Drummond House, Perthshire

This new house in Perthshire is set in the middle of a field on a working farm, an environment that's about as far removed from the romantic notion of the 'rural idyll' as it is possible to be. Instead, it's the influence of strictly functional agricultural construction that shines through.

The Drummond House takes its visual cues from two existing barns on the site, a broad sweep of farmland. Architect Graeme Hutton describes the resulting house and workshop as being 'strangely familiar,' in that they take the raw brick and metal forms of the typical barn typology and give it a twist, with unexpected sheared and twisted forms.

Nicknamed 'The Shed', the three-bedroom house is intended to be submissive to its surroundings. 'In this instance the existing landscape was so commanding, of such scale, that primacy of thought was given to the formal and material quality of the finished object,' Hutton says, explaining that 'architects rarely discuss or readily acknowledge their initial visceral responses to a 'Place' in the design process.'

As a result, the Drummond House is deliberately earthy, its brick walls seeming to grow from the ploughed landscape. A zinc roof, supported by a steel frame, makes deliberate reference to the corrugated metal siding of the adjacent barn.

Inside, expansive windows reach down to the floor to bring the exterior right into the house.

Detailing is minimal throughout. Walls are finished without skirting boards, vertical surfaces are painted white and offset with bold pieces of modern furniture and lighting. In addition to the main house, with its open ground floorplan, double-height living area and three upstairs bedrooms (a guest room is provided downstairs), the adjacent garage contains a studio space.

The house was a collaboration between architects Graeme Hutton, Dean of the Dundee School of Architecture, and the late David Jameson of the University of Dundee and LJRH Chartered Architects.