Our press coverage | For members of the press Page 1 2 > HOUSES OF THE WEEK: Oxfordshire £335,000 Built in 1976 by the architect John Levinson, Anvil Drey is a one-storey property int he village of Letcombe Regis. the three-bedroom, open-plan home has recently been refurbished, with new wooden floors and a kitchen. it is eight miles from Didcot Parkway, which is 45 minutes by fast train from London Paddington, and 17 miles from Oxford. Agent: The Modern House, 08456 344068, www.themodernhouse.net Helen Davies, The Sunday Times, April 2008   HOUSES OF THE WEEK: Essex £475,000 South House, a 19th-century cottage in rural Essex, was transformed in the 1970s - a wraparound glass extension with a black-painted wood frame and floor-to-ceiling glass walls added two studio rooms, a sunken kitchen and a sauna to the four-bedroom property. Set in a half-acre plot, it is one mile away from Feering and 10 from Colchester. Agent: The Modern House, 08456 344068,  www.themodernhouse.net Helen Davies, The Sunday Times, April 2008   'From a neglected late-modernist plot in south London a simple and serene courtyard retreat has emerged: Design and interiors specialist Jason Maclean struggled to find a suitable house to buy in the UK until a friend urged him to check The Modern House, the online estate agency that specialises in 20th century architecture. "I saw this house on the website on Friday and went to look at it on the Saturday," says Maclean "I knew then that I had to have it."' Johnathan Bell, Wallpaper*, April 2008   For Sale: The townhouse, below, in Shoreditch, East London, was built in 2004 and is currently arranged as a top-floor flat above two floors of live-work space. Price: £875,000 (The Modern House, 08456 344068) Bricks and Mortar, The Times, April 2008   HOUSES OF THE WEEK: Leicester £515,000 This Grade II-listed five-bedroom house, built in 1954, is thought to be the first open-plan home built in Britain. Designed by James Cubitt & Partners, the single-storey home, in the suburb of Stoneygate, a mile from the city centre, is full of hardwoods and bespoke cabinets. There is a separate garden studio, set in a quarter of an acre of mature gardens. Agent: The Modern House; 0845 634 4068, www.themodernhouse.net The Sunday Times, March 2008   'Architects' Pads for sale now:  Clerkenwell Green, £2.3 million. Designed by the late Richard Paxton, this five-bedroom house has been described as 'one of the great London houses of the late 20th century'. For more information go to www.themodernhouse.net' Rachel Loos, Grazia, March 2008   'Design for Living: Want a super-modern house but haven't got the time or huge budget to buy one? Find an architect selling their home... A designed-by-a-pro house definitely delivers big-time. It will more than likely feature a layout that has been carefully thought out to maximize every last bit of space. "It won't be a house that has simply been churned out," confirms Albert Hill of The Modern House, an estate agency that specialises in architect homes. "The architect will have thought about everything, including how the house sits in its environment." …Although many ex-architect houses don't come cheap – the average is about £700,000 with top-of-the-range properties going for £2.5 million – you can also snap up beautifully designed homes for as little as £250,000. They are likely to be a good investment, expecially when the market is slow. "Something of quality is always going to hold its value regardless of the ebb and flow of the market," says Albert Hill.' Rachel Loos, Grazia, March 2008.   Niels Nielsen, Byggeri, March 2008   Eva Johannesson, Dagens Industri, February 2008   "Jorn Utzon, Danish architect of the Sydney Opera House, used all his know-how to create this gem of a property amid the half-timbered horrors of Hertfordshire. This property, which took two years to build, is a gem: a beautifully built, lovingly maintained classic. English Heritage calls it 'a distinguished and beautifully detailed modern house'. It's not wrong. The more you see it, the better it gets. It's on sale for £2.5m, which sounds a lot, but isn't  - not for the space and the huge garden. Besides, what price excellence?" Hugh Pearman, The Sunday Times,  3 February 2008   "So where can you find a house or a flat for sale with that special architect-owner legacy? Architecture aficionados will discover a mouth-watering array of beautifully designed homes at The Modern House (themodernhouse.net). Founded in 2004, this unique agency has a reputation as the first port of call for buyers with a passion for great design..." Ben Felsenburg, London Lite, 30 January 2008   "[...] But if traditional grandeur is not your idea of luxury, perhaps an architect-designed modernist masterpiece is. Albert Hill runs the Modern House estate agency, which deals with 'apartments and houses of architectural distinction', as he puts it. 'There's no sign of a downturn here. We haven't noticed any significant change in the market, but then our clients don't look at bricks and mortar in terms of cost per square foot. They look at a house as a piece of art,' Hill says. 'There's always a shortage of appropriate properties to meet demand, so prices are never seriously squeezed,' says Hill, whose agency is so exclusive it does not have a high street office, but instead operates via meetings, viewings and website promotion, and has around 30 homes on its books at a time. Hill is currently selling Heathwoods, a 1970s home at Walton-on-the-Hill in Surrey, with six bedrooms, a suite of offices, an indoor pool and a gym, plus the obligatory floor-to-ceiling glazing and a separate lodge house, too. The price tag? A snip at £2.85m. Or for a mere £1.295m there is Vista Point, a 1960s house on the private estate in West Sussex.  It has five bedrooms and that inevitable pool, but what is wowing the prospective buyers is the wood-panelled spiralled staircase and glass-domed roof that dominate the building. Or if you want a house by a big name architect, try the Lost House, a recent conversion of an industrial building in London's Kings Cross, by David Adjaye. For £2.7m, you get three bedrooms, a dramatic pool - and stunning design. 'The only problem we've had has been the reluctance of sellers to sell such beautiful homes when they have to subject them to Home Information Packs,' says Hill. 'HIPs are standardised and for standard houses, not individual ones like these.' The irony is that the dip in the number of architectural gems put for sale through the agency because of HIPs merely serves to boost the prices of those that are on the market [...]"   What the Agents Saw..., The Independent, 28 November 2007   Ever found yourself tiring of the two-up, three-down end of the market and feel you could offer something to the higher end of the property spectrum? The Modern House, specialising in luxury 20th and 21st century property with real architectural finesse are recruiting… Kate Williams, EA Focus, December 2007   "Designed by the ultra-cool starchitect David Adjaye (who has done work for Ewan McGregor), Lost House is a converted warehouse in King's Cross. At the heart of the four-bedroom house is a 60ft reception room with a black-resin floor. A dramatic enclosed swimming pool runs alongside the master bedroom. Agent: The Modern House; 08456 344068, www.themodernhouse.net They Say: One of the most significant domestic projects of recent times We say: The transformation of King's Cross isn't complete. Life on the outside can be as edgy as the design inside." The Sunday Times, 25 November 2007   "Property of the Week because of the views, through the floor to ceiling windows in the living room and three bedrooms, across the old town to the harbour and the sea. More of the same from the balcony and the gardens. The house was built high across the cliff face by the adventurous 60s architect Mervyn Seal and has been recommended for listed status. An original glass chandelier dangles from one of the timbered ceilings, and the wooden open-tread stairs and bespoke shelving preserve a retro glamour. There's a huge split-level living area, the bedrooms are doubles and a detached study stands in the grounds. A summerhouse with electricity sits at the top of the gardens and a car port at the bottom. Steps lead down from the front gardens to the town centre and the water. Its a shame that... 'the interior fittings are a little weary.' Property Section, The Guardian, 20 November  2007   "Not everyone wants an English country pile, yet Britain's modern houses can be frustratingly hard to find.  So Albert Hill and Matt Gibberd, whose CVs include architecture, design and property journalism, decided to set up the Modern House, an estate agency specialising in exceptional properties from the 1920s onward" Nisha Lilia Diu, Stella Magazine [The  Sunday Telegraph], October 2007   "Vista Point was designed in the late 1960s by Gwynne for his chartered surveyor. Unimpressed by the local house styles in the Willowhayne estate - although there is a Marcel Breuer villa in a nearby road, for the most part, it is a hodgepodge of chalet bungalows, flatulent Tudorbethan and 1930s neo-rustic - Gwynne showed his contempt for the neighbours by devising a home that severed ties with them." Angela Pertusini, Telegraph Property,  15 September 2007   "In the heart of the Kings Cross regeneration area, Lost House occupies the site of a former delivery yard. Its unobtrusive street presence gives little clue as to the awe-inspiring interior within..." Grand Design. Offers: £2,850,000 Location: Crinan Street, N1 Agent: The Modern House Grand Design, Add Lib Magazine, 9 July 2007   "Property of the Week: Its a riveting alien looming over the Norfolk coast. Once a 50's bungalow, it was distended and embellished by its owners, who plucked part of the roof into a wigwam of a chimney with a glass panel at the top through which the stars wink..."  Anna Tims, The Guardian Weekend Magazine, 9 June 2007   "If you're smitten with the modernist aesthetic, contact THE MODERN HOUSE, which sells twentieth and twenty-first century homes of architectural distinction." Vanessa Barneby, Vogue, 16 January 2007   "Architect Alistair Howe and his wife Jane, a teacher, wanted a house with a big space for the family, and when, 12 years ago, they found a plot of land in Hudson, Hertfordshire, Alistair set about designing a house that would provide both fine views and their longed-for ideal living space ... The glazed wall of the exterior windows and the double-height atrium, which runs up through the centre of the house, is a bold architectural statement in a traditional English village. However, as the house is built from local materials, such as white render, black windows and grey tiles on the roof, there were no problems with the planners...” Anthea Masey, Evening Standard (Homes & Property), 16 May 2007   "For a breath of fresh air, go north to Tufnell Park, where one of five award-winning, glamorous 'Modernist' town houses, built in 2003 on a challenge plot is up for grabs at £490,000. Crisp white architecture, generous storage space and a private, decked roof terrace are among the plus points [...] Agent: The Modern House" Buy of the Week, Evening Standard (Homes & Property), 18 April 2007   "For something cutting-edge, themodernhouse.net offers mid-century modern classics and 21st-century award-winners. The historical details on each property are superb, as are the photographs and floor plans." Jonathan Christie, The Independent, 14 March 2007   This article features a Royston Summers-designed house in surrey for sale with the Modern House at £1.35mil:  "A new design-conscious generation is becoming brave enough to reintroduce its Panton chairs to an original 1960s or 70s home. 'I've been handling modern furniture for 15 years, and it's only in that time that people have begun to understand and collect post-war design. It's inevitable and logical that the next progression is to look at post-war housing to put it all in', explains Christie's modern design expert Simon Andrews, who has been living in 1960s builds for the past seven years - by chance at first and now by choice - and is observing growing interest in a previously disregarded market. [...] Albert Hill, an estate agent with The Modern House web-based agency, confirms that fashionable young creative and media families, who favour the roomy dimensions and blank internal canvas of a non-period interior, are appropriating 1960s and 70s homes."  Jenny Dalton, Financial Times, 16 June 2006   "Stillness was built in 1934 by an architect called Gilbert Booth, in the moderne style. Its front, public face, is angular and quite austere which gives way at the back to a mass of voluptuous curves, punctured with glass and topped with a sun-deck to make use of its sunny south-facing position and to embrace the modernist ethos of health and well-being. Apart from renewing the electrics and replacing half of the windows (David went to Crittall as they had made the originals), there was little to do to the house but paint it a palette of soft neutral colours, re-render the exterior and get the original floors in tip top condition. Because it was brick-built rather than concrete-built it has none of the damp problems which are often associated with modernist homes." Homes & Antiques, 15 November 2006   "In bosky little corners of England, tucked away down country lanes and suburban cul-de-sacs, are the remnants of pioneering experiments in modern living. Some still work, some don’t; some have been altered beyond recognition. But what about a 42 year-old glass, steel and timber house that is beautifully restored, makes a splendid family home and looks as if it were built yesterday? There aren’t so many of those. Space House in West Sussex is one of them. And it is for sale. [...] It is the home of Andrew Spurgeon and Ann Kelly and their son, Seren, 2, and as you watch the toddler pushing toys round the centre of the house, clambering down the broad steps into the big garden and returning with blackberries, you wonder why some people think that modernism and children don’t mix. Apart from anything else, floor-to-ceiling windows mean anyone one of any size can see out" Hugh Pearman, The Sunday Times, 20 August 2006   "An exceptionally important house called Six Pillars, by Berthold Lubetkin's architectural practice, has come on to the market in Dulwich. It was designed in 1932 and has 4 bedrooms, a study, a dining room and a sitting room that is 23ft by 16ft. Lubetkin is arguably the most influential figure in the British Modern movement. [...] Not all Modernist homes are beyond reach of a modest budget. Take the exceptional Ellis-Miller house in Prickwillow, Cambridgeshire. Built in the 1980s by Jonathan Ellis-Miller and borrowing heavily from Charles and Ray Eames, Craig Elwood and Mies Van Der Rohe. A derivative property is a great, affordable way to experience modernist living if it is done well, as this one is. It won the 1993 Riba British Steel Awards. When it's sunny, it's like a bit of Palm Springs in the Shires [...] Each of these properties are available through The Modern House, an agency that deals specifically with Modernist homes." Simon Davis, The Spectator, June 2006   "I decided to set up a company devoted to selling Modern houses with a colleague, Matt Gibberd... Although we deal with houses of later periods as well, it was the buildings of the 1920s and 1930s that first captured our hearts." Albert Hill, The Independent Magazine, 2006   "You don’t have to be educated in architecture to appreciate Lubetkin's Six Pillars, but if you are, you'll fall in love...  When journalist Roger Trapp and his City solicitor wife, Deidre, bought Six Pillars, their modernist house, high on a hill in Sydenham, south London, neither of them had heard of the architect Berthold Lubetkin, and his architectural practice Tecton, 'We bought it for its clean, modern design, not for its architectural pedigree, which we only discovered later', says Roger Trapp " Anthea Masey, City AM, February 2006   "Albert Hill and Matt Gibberd launched The Modern House, Britain's first estate agency dealing exclusively in 'houses of architectural distinction from the 1920s to the present day'." Annabel Freyberg, The Telegraph Magazine, 2006   Page 1 2 > The Modern House 08456 344068 info@themodernhouse.net