Original subtitles

There are places in Britain where no-one wants to see a house built -

in our green belt perhaps, in our National Parks,

in the centres of our historic towns

which are replete with heritage sites

and Roman archaeology.

And then, there are those people who are determined to build,

who will fight even a 34-year history of planning refusal.

Who consider it their right, their duty,

to fight the system and to break the deadlock.

Surrounding one of Britain's most historic cathedrals in Hertfordshire

is some of the country's most highly protected land.

There's been no chance of building on it for the past 30 years.

But no-one reckoned on golf-coach Chris.

After a playing career,

he went into business, running and owning golf centres.

He is a true sportsman, trained to win.

Winning I guess is always important. It's pleasurable to win,

you don't want to lose, I guess, more than anything else.

Chris met his future wife, Kayo,

when she booked golf lessons with him 20 years ago.

She's also a sports champion,

figure skating for her home country, Japan.

I am quite strong, I like to compete and I like to win, I don't give in.

They have three school-age children.

Theirs an active, driven family

who don't easily take "no" for an answer.

And their lives are about to be uprooted.

They live in this house, in the shadow of the Abbey.

The new building plot they've bought is bang next door,

on a strip of wasteland.

This is your house there, is it?

It is indeed. What a lovely building.

It's gorgeous and semi-rural - what's wrong with this?

Well, absolutely nothing really, nothing wrong with the house,

nothing at all wrong with the positioning of it other than unfortunately

this particular site was a huge problem for us because there was massive

antisocial behaviour going on when we arrived - lots of youths drinking,

taking drugs, doing whatever.

Was that because you're surrounded by woodland and open space?

Yes, because we're very close to a main city centre

and this was a hidden piece of woodland and it was very easy for kids to come in there,

hide away from everybody.

How many times did we call the police?

I don't know, 50 or 60 times?

Seriously? Yep.

The family home, in the dream location, turned out to be a nightmare.

Chris and Kayo's solution was to build a house on the plot next door.

But that's easier said than done.

It's on a scheduled ancient monument site,

so it needs the say-so from Historic England

and scrutiny from the planners.

It is a very difficult site - archaeology,

location in relation to the abbey.

If you were actually going to, in planning policy terms,

look at this site on a piece of paper you would say there's no chance of us

actually putting something positive.

It didn't take Chris and Kayo long to find out they'd bitten off much,

much more than they could chew.

It can't have been that easy, the past few years.

No, it was difficult for a long time, you know, Chris' moods up and down.

Sometimes sending an application in,

you never get the response for months and months, Chris gets frustrated.

I think, you know,

she probably knows my ambition -

when I decide I want to do something,

then I don't like to stop and back down,

so I was determined to try and sort out this problem.

Chris put on his best sporting armour and went into battle,

and after six long years of struggle,

making endless alterations and concessions to get it through the planning process,

a design was agreed.

The shallow foundations give a clue to the unusual zigzag shape of this

house, following the slope's contours and the lines of previous archaeology trenches

so as to respect the medieval and Roman remains buried below.

Meanwhile, the planners wanted to see a single-storey building here so as to

preserve the sight lines to and from the abbey and construction would

be in light, highly-insulated timber cassettes

to reduce the weight of the building on the archaeology below.

The glazed link between the two wings will suggest a light transparent

centre to the house that's almost not there.

Cladding will be narrow cinder-coloured bricks,

with decorative coursing echoing a 2,000-year-old Roman wall-building style

appropriate for this city.

The brickwork flourishes will be triangular-pierced screens almost

redolent of ruined walls.

The roof will be flat and punctured by three large roof lights and a

series of light tubes to brightly illuminate the rooms.

And it'll be covered in sedum, another planning condition.

The west wing will contain a series of bedrooms - the master suite,

a row of three almost monastic rooms for the children,

a spare room and at the end, a family cinema room.

Through the front door,

you'll cross a tiny moat of water

then turn left along the glazed link to

reach the living wing. You'll have noticed there's no white emulsion here.

The house is built of wood and lined with wood - maple,

partly to suggest a traditional house in Japan.

Almost every fitting and piece of furniture will be crafted from yet more

maple in the pursuit of a single, ordered aesthetic.

There are rooms too - this house isn't open-plan -

but highly organised into compartments - sitting and dining rooms and a kitchen.

This design is rich in influences - it's part Japanese transparency

and lightness, part mediaeval cloister and part Roman villa in layout.

And nowhere are you far from a relationship with the natural,

organic world, which of course for Chris,

means there has to be a putting green in his garden.

The layout of this highly unusual house is already carved into the ground.

You have to remember that although this building is not vast in volume,

its footprint is large on the ground

because it's a bungalow - it's a single-storey building.

So the living wing here, for example,

the foundations are in for that.

Then there's the extra foundations here for the link between that wing and

the bedroom wing over here.

And although these don't look very precise, these foundations,

because they're so big and so long,

if they are only a few degrees out,

that means the building itself then won't fit on to the footings.

What's really bizarre is the foundations for this, look,

this is where the bedrooms kind of crank out,

and look what the concrete does.

It's bizarre. It's like following a crazy golf course.

Where's the windmill?

I'm really not sure what I make of this highly-detailed,

very crafted design - it's not fashionable, thank goodness.

But it's not my house, it's Chris and Kayo's.

Do you like it much? Do you like the design? It's unusual, isn't it?

You know, I think I could probably tell you that in a few months' time.

So you're not sure? I got a kind of Eureka moment when we got the planning

permission, and then I kind of asked myself - do I definitely want to live

in this house, and my architect had to sit me down and kind of start all over again.

His passion, his enthusiasm,

his vision I think convinced me that this was really worth building and

maybe even worth living in. Now hang on, he's the architect,

you're the client, it's not the other way round,

I mean, surely you feel some passion for this, some kind of excitement,

some kind of vision?

I think, you know,

when you win a battle,

sometimes there needs to be a kind of period of time

when you gather your thoughts

and I'm still probably in that mode.

Gathering? Yeah.

I wasn't expecting that.

Chris is just gathering his thoughts about a house he's commissioned.

And we're not talking small change here,

this is an expensive part of the country so the plot wouldn't have

been a cheap investment.

Certainly five, five zeros and more.

I can't remember you know, I'm not very good with zeros.

I suggest it's six - it's got to be well into six?

It may be, I can't remember.

And how much is it going to cost you to put the building on it?

Well, we started off with a budget of 600 but it seems to be going up.

And when do you hope to finish?

Oh, soon.

A year. A year and a half.

18 months, sounds good.

So, all in all they'll take 18 months or longer to build a house for

between one and a half and two million pounds, I reckon,

a house which I'm not sure they even like.

This highly unusual project has been designed by Rogan Gale-Brown.

He's worked with Chris for over 20 years,

designing his golf centres and house extensions.

This house is something of a passion project.

I'm actually doing this as part of a long-term vision of mine,

and hopefully it will have something to say to young architects about

thinking about architecture rather than just drawing white square lines on

paper and just plugging glass in which, you know, I just don't believe in.

This is a designer who knows his own mind, that's clear.

I've got a few questions for Rogan.

Chris has been very happy to be led on this project by you.

Well, yes he has.

He really didn't know in the beginning what he was going to get,

he took a leap of faith,

and I hope that by now he's appreciated what we are trying to do for him -

that it's unlocked his vision of what he'd like to see.

I'm absolutely admiring of your clients here in handing you this gorgeous

and beautiful responsibility of, you know, kind of leading them,

taking them on this journey but of course there is always the risk

that in the end they will turn round to you and say,

"Hang on, we've seen the models. We don't like it!

"This is not our house, it's yours, Rogan."

It sounds a bit egotistical to say it, but I think that I've been

deeply into their psyche, I know what they feel,

I know that Kayo doesn't like things lying around,

that she likes everything in cupboards and I know that they don't like

endless open space.

This is trust of the highest order.

There are a lot of opinions going on here.

But very little from the clients, Chris and Kayo.

Now then, there's a question of ownership here because it's almost as

though the architect is half expecting to move into this house when it's finished.

Oh, and then there's English Heritage, of course, who have wanted

to design the thing from scratch from the word go,

the local authority who have taken an interest, oh,

and there's of course Chris and Kayo, the people who are paying for it,

you know, for whom the project is almost a by-product, really, of a separate

process of trying to figure out what to do with this site -

I mean, whose house is it?

It takes nearly seven months to complete

the crazy golf concrete footings that step up and down the site,

which is now ready for the next phase -

the highly-insulated timber frame which is being manufactured off-site

as ready-made wall, floor and ceiling panels, or cassettes,

every one of which is a different size and shape.

And today is project manager Steve's personal moment of truth.

Will the 786 cassettes fit his complicated foundations?

I'm confident what I've done's right.

I wasn't confident it fit cos I didn't have any control over

making these cassettes, but I don't think a computer can be wrong -

it's what you put into it.

At last, Steve is no longer alone.

There's a new team on site, and work's accelerating.

The main issue of today was getting the vehicles in.

It's quite a tight site, so bit of a hoo-hah there,

but we got in, got out.

No damage, all the trees are still there, so...good.

This single-storey house has a very large footprint

of 557 square metres -

nearly six times your average family home -

sprawling over this sloping site.

Size isn't the only problem, though.

Normally, a timber frame like this would drop neatly onto a flat slab,

everything in line and square.

There you go, that's how an ordinary house is laid out -

one, two, three, four little rooms. Very straightforward, isn't it?

That's not what they've done here, though,

cos the watchword for this project is "complicated".

So in order to follow the slope of the hill,

what Rogan's done in each of these two wings is not only angle

the rooms, but also step them so that across the site

you step up from one room to the next, one room to the next

through the building, and as a result of that, at the far end

at the top there, it's a metre above ground level at this end.

So what does that mean?

It means that from the setting out of the groundworks, and the slab,

and to the walls, to the roof, to the glazing -

every part of the building is different to every other part.

Enormously complicated.

No, you haven't got a plinth there. You've got a plinth going across

the back there, and you've got a plinth going across here.

Once they get their heads round the plans,

the team bolt the walls to the floor plates.

Each of these floor decks have got solid timbers,

so we can screw through the base of the panel into the solid timber,

which holds it down.

One of the benefits of this type of construction should be speed.

Timber frame wise, if we were to get a clear run at it,

we'd be looking at sort of a five-week programme,

a five-, six-week programme.

Five weeks would be a long schedule

for a normal timber, cassette-frame house.

Everything about this project is lengthy.

But while Steve and the timber company get on with their job,

Chris has time to get back onto the golf course - with me.

Boy, oh, boy. This is not my natural habitat.

I feel a bit like a fish out of water.

Chris is a proper sportsman -

he keeps his cards very close to his chest.

Maybe he'll open up here in his comfort zone.

That's a super shot! Where did it go?

GLASS SMASHES Straight in the greenkeeper's shed.

Oh, man! Very well struck, though. Sorry!

This is going rather well.

Time to ask the hard questions.

What does he really think about Rogan's design?

It's very different to anything you've lived in before, isn't it?

When we started the project,

it was Rogan's baby in terms of the style of the house,

something that fitted the site and pleased the planners

and English Heritage and everybody else.

I think it is going to be different from where we've ever lived before,

and I'm kind of embracing that.

I think it's a rare opportunity to live in a house

that is really extremely unusual.

Back at Chris and Kayo's current home,

I have a chance to see for myself just exactly what their usual is.

Hello. Hello. Can I come in? Please come in.

I'll take my shoes off here. Yes, please, it's Japanese style.

That's good. No, I approve of it, cos it keeps the house clean.

We always ask people to take their shoes off.

How oriental, then, is your house?

Cos you grew up in Tokyo, didn't you?

Yes, because I grew up in Tokyo,

my parents' house never had tatami mats, and more and more...

So it was more western? More western.

So you're quite westernised, then, in your tastes

and in the way that you like to furnish... Yes. ..the home.

This is classic family living -

comfortable, likeable and unsurprising.

Definitely sociable.

There's a table and chairs... Yes. ..there's a table and chairs... Yes!

..there's a table and chairs and in your kitchen,

you've got seating for eating as well.

So, quite clearly, that's important to you.

Yes, we like to sit down and eat.

If it's nice weather, we sit outside.

Oh, my goodness me, what a tidy kitchen!

You don't like clutter, do you?

No, I like plenty of cupboards so I can put everything away. Yeah.

Can I have a look inside your cupboards? No. Top Secret.

Really? How tidy...? You are quite tidy.

Seriously, I mean, look, there's nothing on that worktop.

I mean, there should be a toaster or a kettle or something.

They're all in the utility room.

Can we go and look at that? No. Oh.

Because British people, they probably only have a kettle

and a toaster, but I have to have bread maker, rice cooker,

toaster and fish roaster... Yes. ..so I have all different gadgets.

In the utility room? Yes, for different cooking.

So when you cook a specific meal, you'll bring...

One comes out, and goes back in.

To the utility room? Yes.

So importantly, in the new kitchen... Yes?

..will there be somewhere to put the rice cooker?

Yes, I have an extremely large utility room.

KEVIN CHUCKLES

I'm now convinced that, were it not for Rogan,

Chris and Kayo would be building a house that might look quite similar

to the one they live in at the moment.

And I wouldn't blame them,

because their new house would, I think, challenge anyone's judgment.

Here's the thing - this design really isn't to my taste.

But that doesn't matter, because taste changes,

taste is unreliable.

Whereas quality -

the quality of design, the quality of execution of something,

how well it is thought about and put together -

that...that's a sort of a constant,

that is something that we can all instinctively recognise.

So I'm looking forward to the quality of this project,

and all I can do is exalt you to put your taste to one side

and prepare yourself to admire this house.

After two weeks of painstaking cassette assembly,

the house is starting to take shape.

And then the inevitable happens.

But this wall is like top-to-bottom glass.

How are you going to close this glass in the evening,

if you're having a bath in the evening?

After months of standing on the sidelines,

Chris and Kayo make a sudden move.

They want changes, starting with their bedroom.

We noticed that, as we entered the room, the wall which actually

formed the bathroom was directly in the way of the whole of the room,

so you saw nothing other than the hallway and this wall.

I mean, right here, the wall came all the way across to here,

so literally the wall was just here in fact, and you can see how close

that is to the chimney itself.

And we felt that compromised such a beautiful feature,

as well as blocking the view as you walked into the room.

A second alteration they want to Rogan's design is

to change the cinema room into a large bedroom overlooking the abbey.

I think we've kind of put our thoughts into it now

rather than just follow the drawings.

It's our own little mark on what is Rogan's masterplan.

The site has to wait for new engineering drawings

to make the Chris and Kayo changes, so everything stops for a month,

adding several thousand pounds to the budget.

When the construction team get back,

they find the project manager, Steve, is missing.

We've turned up on site today, and Steve's not here.

I'm not sure if he's coming back, or if he's gone to another project,

but sort of bit in the dark ourselves at the moment, so...

It was a bit unexpected,

but we know what we're doing, timber frame wise,

so it shouldn't affect us massively, so we shall proceed.

Onwards and upwards.

Chris has made a big decision about Steve.

There was a time when I almost felt like there really wasn't enough for

him to be doing, so I guess I felt that the time had come when maybe

I needed to probably play a closer role.

It is my house, at the end of the day.

Chris has decided to project manage this build himself.

This is dangerous territory.

Chris has never managed anything on this scale before.

They're now one year into the 18-month schedule, and it's already

costing more and taking longer than Chris had planned for.

As a businessman, that's what I always have to ask myself -

is this value for money,

does it represent a good investment,

and am I going to be happy living here?

But this isn't just an investment -

it's their new family home, isn't it?

And to make matters worse, he has Rogan's complex design to handle.

Yeah, this is his canvas,

and I'm the kind of protector of that, I guess.

And I've got to ensure that I try and really kind of do him justice,

and I hope I do at the end,

and I hope that we enjoy this as a family home.

But I'm sure I will.

Chris is treating this project as a business proposition,

where the profit and loss and balance sheet value will somehow

eventually be measured in family happiness.

And like all business propositions, it is a gamble.

Towards the end of 2014,

the timber frame of Chris and Kayo's house

is finally completed and the brick cladding is underway.

Like everything else in this house, it's beautiful and complicated.

I've never built one of these feature walls.

I've done sort of, other brickwork,

but never anything like this.

I mean, hats off to the architect for designing it.

19,700 and something, probably 80-something bricks.

There'll be a light behind them and plants growing up them.

Unusual, very unusual.

Organic architecture.

That's what I've been told, anyway.

Now there's two people who understand this house -

Rogan, and the master bricklayer.

Lots of complicated shapes and troughs and planters.

Levels and steps and brickwork and triangles.

My goodness me, Rogan is not a man who is afraid of triangles.

This is a very, very strongly shaped building and really powerful.

And it does bear the stamp of its designer.

What I can't see, yet,

is the mark of Chris.

This house has its own fabulous character,

and I'm starting to understand it,

and EVEN like it.

It's a building that wants a place in architectural history,

that might even, as Rogan hopes, move it on.

Settle down, class, because we're going to look at some slides.

Look at those shapes, look at those strong triangular forms,

that perforated brickwork, you know?

I think that, actually, the tradition that this house fits into

is primarily 20th century,

in the works of people like Stromberg.

This is one of his houses which has deep overhangs,

a big projecting roof, casting deep shadows over the building.

And here's another house which could almost be by Rogan,

it's actually by Frank Lloyd Wright, dating from the 1930s.

Again, lots of glass, overhangs and planters,

loads of places within the architecture to put foliage.

And like Chris and Kayo's house, this building by Frank Lloyd Wright,

the Kentuck Knob house, uses triangles, big projecting angles,

overhangs and hexagons - perforations in the roof structure,

just like at Chris and Kayo's house.

You know, I think this is Frank Lloyd Wright

at his most sophisticated, at his most beautifully crafted.

It's the point in his career where he is most inspired by Rogan.

Rogan is clearly trying to build a fine distinctive

piece of architecture here.

But is that the same thing as a family house

Chris and Kayo will love and enjoy?

There's a particular brand of mid-century kind of brick house

that this building speaks of,

and it's pretty uncompromising,

and it's not going to be to everybody's liking, but...

..it is to mine.

There are some days when I walk through it,

and I think actually I do,

this is really beginning to be something I do like,

but I am somebody probably quite tight with my emotions

and I don't let myself kind of get too far ahead.

I think...

..in golf we always say, you know, take one hole at a time.

You'd have to ask me at the end whether I love it or hate it,

but I hope I love it.

So Chris still isn't sure he likes the house.

Blimey.

However, he is resolutely faithful to Rogan.

And there's a lot to either love or hate,

because Rogan isn't just designing the house,

he's designed the entire interior as well,

right down to the very last detail.

He's even designing the lampshades.

Any other designer would select something that was ready-made.

You've designed and made here a prototype

and this is going to be completely bespoke throughout the building.

And this is because...

It ties in with what we're doing with the furniture

and it performs its function specifically,

it's not something which you can say,

"Well, I'm going to choose some general fitting,

"it doesn't really matter. It more or less fits into the scheme."

So for you, the landscape, right down to the smallest component,

if you can design it, you will.

I will.

It's much, much, more effort to design,

build and install than to buy fixtures,

fittings and furniture off the peg.

I have no idea how long it will take to achieve the level of detail

Rogan wants and I don't think Chris knows either.

Yeah, obviously, you know, more man hours,

no more materials, but more man hours for sure.

Yeah, I think there is an increase in cost,

there's no question of that,

but, again, you know, hopefully, it's justified in the end product.

One thing has remained constant, though,

Rogan's remarkable and rare relationship

with his client, Chris.

As the architectural experience has been open to him,

you know, he's suddenly beginning to click,

and, frankly, he's doing things that I didn't expect him to do.

I didn't think he would build the furniture in

and all the fittings and so on.

I think, if I'm really honest,

I'm probably allowing him to do what he wants to do.

Yeah, he's come so far with this,

and he's lived and breathed it,

and I'm indebted to him, you know, if I'm honest.

He feels everything about this building,

if he comes in and we've done something slightly different

to what he suggested, you know, I can see it breaks his heart.

And you know, how many people are there in this world,

that really care that much?

Chris gets his house watertight

courtesy of a joinery firm from Slovakia

who make, deliver and fit the floor-to-ceiling windows

around the whole horseshoe-shaped courtyard.

There seem to be no lengths Chris and Kayo won't go to

in order to satisfy the Rogan brief, at a price they can afford,

so they journey to the high Tatra Mountains in Slovakia

to oversee all the bespoke furniture and fittings.

There is four of them.

See all these shadow lines,

they match the ones on the ceiling.

We won't see them. That's a shame.

That one, as well, will be white so it can reflect the light.

Oh, my God. I think maybe leave them natural, you know.

Nice, gliding drawers.

This is the part which will come out.

I see. That will be your dressing part

and then you can open any door, open any holder.

So that's my dressing table, is it?

Have we started the utility room yet?

Originally, when we saw on the drawings,

and now, actually, if you see in the 3D, the actual pieces,

and very precise and handcrafted, it's very impressive.

All those hundreds of Rogan drawings are becoming the furniture

they will live with.

There have been times when you think, "Oh, my God.

"Are we heading in the right direction, here?"

But he's always said to me,

"Chris, just go with me on this."

Back in the UK,

the third Christmas comes and goes,

and the house is still not ready to move into.

You know, I was just thinking that I was last here nearly a year ago.

Blimey. Talk about The Lost Weekend...

..this was The Lost Year.

Lost to detail.

All those maple walls and ceilings,

not to mention all the handmade maple furniture,

are a slow labour of love.

It's taking longer than we were expecting,

we have to keep attention to the details.

But details make it perfect.

When do you expect to move in?

Definitely some time in 2016.

Well, that would be a relief.

I mean, most people, me included,

standing here looking at the building in the current state

might say...

Eight weeks. Six to eight weeks.

It's a possibility.

But I think it might be longer than that.

Well, we haven't even ordered the kitchen, yet.

We haven't ordered a lot of things, actually,

which we simply can't afford.

I have a particular style that I want for the kitchen.

I don't want a cheap kitchen to be fitted

just because we want to move in here,

I'd rather wait than rush into it.

The most exciting thing from our point of view, as well,

is maybe bringing some things over from Japan.

You know, again, we've been talking to Rogan about that,

as to what may or may not fit in with the house.

I mean, it does sound like a kind of, you know,

three's company kind of thing in this situation,

but it's, I mean, maybe Rogan is going to move into one of the rooms,

I'm not sure.

You know, with you guys, he's going to be hanging the last picture,

the last plant in its pot, making sure that it's growing,

and only then will he pull back. He's part of the family.

Delivering the finish to Rogan's precise instructions

takes the whole of the rest of 2016.

The family hasn't moved in, but the furniture arrives.

Yes! There she goes.

Ah! Ah!

Happy ever after!

But all this time and all these details

have taken their toll on Chris's bank balance.

Yeah, we just had to slow it down

because we didn't have any money to pay anybody.

We didn't have any choice. It was as simple as that, really.

We had to be practical, we had to wait until we could afford things,

so we decided that time was our friend rather than our enemy.

All this time, all this money,

yet Chris and Kayo don't seem downhearted,

if anything, they're more upbeat than I've seen them before.

So, after four years in the making,

seven years in the planning and designing,

and, let's face it, 20 years of building up the relationship

between designer and client...

Am I right in thinking

that Chris and Kayo are just beginning to enjoy this place,

that they actually do like it?

This really is a special place.

But have we got the exceptional piece of architecture this location

deserves? After a very tricky four-year project,

I think Chris and Kayo have at last moved in.

But is it the home they want?

Wow.

What a house!

Outside, at least, the house appears rooted and bedded,

almost anchored to its site,

with vegetation and all that robust brickwork.

Hello! Hi, Kevin, how are you? Hello.

Very well, how are you?

I'm very well. I'm not claiming anything.

I'm not claiming any territory with this flag!

I see you've come well-equipped. KEVIN LAUGHS

Welcome. How are you, Kayo? Nice to see you.

And you, and you. But it looks very beautifully finished, I mean,

highly detailed, plants and everything.

Thank you. So is it all really done?

Almost. Almost.

KEVIN LAUGHS

Yeah, this house will never be done.

Obviously the planting really is the thing that... Yeah. ..is taking time

and we always anticipated that.

It's taken over ten long years to get this house up and finished

but it's well worth the wait.

Surrounded by these majestic, giant trees,

this extraordinary-shaped house is almost lost in the green.

But that's what the guardians of this precious plot insisted on.

It could've been a bureaucratic mess.

It isn't.

I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing the inside of this house.

Uh-huh. ..experiencing it. Come inside. Come in.

Shall I take the flag? Well, I thought you could leave it

at the front door, and then it tells people that you're in.

Oh, my word.

Oh, this is...already remarkable.

Thank you.

Inside, it's breathtaking.

The light is so soft you can almost touch it, taste it.

Every surface glows and is pristine.

I'm quite overwhelmed by all of this.

The reflections of mirror and light

and transparency and timber, I mean, this is veneered.

It is veneered. It's like walking into a Japanese timber-post house.

Yes. And so exquisitely finished.

The long promenade - it's too wide to be a corridor - theatrically

sets up your arrival at the main event.

Pulls you all the way down into this room.

And the main event is, no doubt about it,

the vision of organically inspired geometric craftsmanship that Rogan

promised. It hits you between the eyes.

And all this maple - the floor, the furniture, the lights, the windows,

the ceiling, the shelving - this is all - table, sofa -

is maple. Is that right? All maple.

So that's Rogan's choice yeah, maple? Yes.

A maple building.

So do you like it?

Do you, I mean, so much of the one thing, do you enjoy that?

Yes. Yes.

I think, like a Frank Lloyd Wright house, it is an homogenous thing.

Everything kind of works together,

so I think it would be a great tragedy if you kind of ripped this

maple out and put a white ceiling in, I think that would really

be horrible and be very sad actually.

These lights, right, I thought...

I thought these were going to be just too much,

I drew the line at that, I thought just for heaven's sakes

go out and buy something, cos this is

expensive to make and do,

and I don't want to... Oh, it does, it does, it does move.

Yeah. Fantastic.

They're actually brilliant.

You know, once upon a time I think you said that I was a patron of

Rogan and I think you were basically right,

I think because I love the guy and I believe in him.

And you've worked with him for 20-odd years.

And I've worked with him for 20-odd years, you know,

this was a project I was prepared to share with him

and I'm not disappointed I did.

We automatically follow Rogan's pre-determined route

around the house.

Next stop, the dining room.

Also in maple, of course.

The last room to be completed was the kitchen.

So how are your cupboards?

No. No.

As always, you cannot look inside the cupboards. Oh!

I'm sure they're beautifully tidy.

Please look from the outside. OK.

OK.

What I can see over there,

on the shelves because there are no cupboard doors,

are books. Are they cookery books?

Yes, they are cookery books.

I covered them up with the washi,

which is a Japanese old rice papers, which you see on these white doors.

How beautiful. The wooden doors.

How very beautiful.

Problem is I've got no idea which is which. Which one is which!

Exactly, exactly. That's OK, Chris never used them anyway.

HE LAUGHS

This house may seem paradoxical, both futuristic and historical,

but it's successful because it's the hard-won fruition of a 20-year

relationship between designer and client.

So, across the... what do you call this room?

This is the atrium. The atrium.

This is the connection between the living and bedroom.

Yeah, it's a good long distance, isn't it? It is.

To walk. Yeah.

On down through here, very pretty shafts of light - and these kimonos.

Yes, this is my kimono I wore when I was seven years old. Never!

And in Japan on the third birthday and the seventh birthday you have

the girls celebrate their health in front of the shrine and they always

wear a kimono and this is the kimono I wore when I was seven years old

and this should be passed on to the next generation.

The Japanese ideas of composure and formality permeate this house,

not least in the bedroom wing,

where each room enjoys a private terrace, angled to catch the sun.

Space for contemplation.

And in to...

Master bedroom.

Isn't it just?

So it was at this point, I felt

that you really asserted yourselves and you said,

"Right, no, this is where we step in," almost.

Yeah, I think we combined our thoughts,

I think that's the way, it's always been a collaborative process,

and it's always been the three of us really working together.

Oh, very nice.

Beautiful.

And the bath is magnificent.

That's a Japanese bath. Yes.

With a television? Yes. Stonking.

And there's another stonking bedroom at the abbey end of the house.

Plus, those three private bedrooms for the children,

yet again in maple.

Rogan's pursuit of his organic ideal for a healthy,

whole house is at once a complex and a personal agenda

and, at the same time, a great gift to Chris and Kayo.

Are they grateful for it?

You said to me, ooh, a long while ago,

that you would sort of approach this like a businessman.

You were looking for value for money,

you were looking for a return on your investment

and you also expressed a hope to be happy living in it.

Does it deliver against those?

I think as a house to live in, it's all that we could ever hope for,

maybe much more so.

I think, you know, every single day that goes by and you see the house

kind of organically taking shape,

to me that's value for money in itself.

And how much did it cost in the end, in terms of value for money?

Well, I mean, it cost four years of our lives,

so that's the biggest cost,

and probably another, you know, six years of planning as well,

so maybe around ten years altogether.

So that's a big investment.

But you wanted to spend 600k,

you thought it might go north.

It might go north, it might go south, it might go east,

it might go west, I'm never too sure,

but, you know, I suppose in the end we went east with

the design

and I'm very happy that we did.

OK, you're not going to tell me how much you spent.

I'm sorry, is that what you asked me? Yeah!

I'm really sorry, I missed that.

Chris was always going to be coy about how much this crafted house

cost to put together.

But I guess he's right.

It's not about the money, if you can afford it.

It's about wanting to connect to this place.

You said very clearly about your old house just next door that there was

nothing wrong with it, so what does this home bring you,

bring your family, that that didn't give you?

Yes, I always felt like the kids, the children,

were upstairs in their bedrooms, I'm downstairs in the kitchen.

I feel like we're all together because the fact is it's on a single

storey. Even though you're separated by the atrium?

I can open the window and they're on the other side.

Yeah, that's nice, that sense of connection there

across the open space. Yes, there is a connection.

And for you, Chris?

Yeah, I think if I could please the principle stakeholders,

if I could resolve the issues on this site and create a nice piece of

architecture for this time.

You know, the Romans were here 2,000 years ago,

the monastery 500 years ago, here we are today.

Erm.

It's just a little statement,

our little statement on the planet in this time, and that's it.

And I hope we've done something that... All of which makes it sound

as though, you know, you feel that the years,

decades of work to get here have all been worth it.

I think so, I hope so.

If this unusual house speaks of anything,

it's not of Roman villas or monasteries

or of Frank Lloyd Wright.

It speaks of collaboration, friendship and trust -

and golf.

Well...

I hope you've had the discipline to be able to park your taste

and instead...

Yes!

Admire the craftsmanship, admire the quality of the design of this place,

cos it is there and it's brilliant

because of the relationship between Rogan, Chris and Kayo,

because of the absolute faith

that they placed in each other throughout.

And I know that that faith is underpinned by a refusal to give up,

by an absolute belief

that things will triumph, that you'd expect,

from a pair of sporting diehards.

We sold a very nice house. Yeah, and you bought a pile of...

We want that rough, industrial finish.

We don't want it to look perfect.

I'd put the loo here. That's our wardrobe.

We'd be going to the toilet in a cupboard. Plenty of people do.

Some of it is out of our control.

We're making our lives more difficult, basically.

The road that a ruin will take you down is the road to ruin.