A winning design for life

Richard Parr, founder of Richard Parr Associates. Main image, Holliers Close

What makes an award-winning house? For the judges in Savills x House & Garden’s Project of the Year 2026, the answer lay in a home in the Chilterns designed by Richard Parr, one that not only had beauty, interest and adaptability but also perfectly captured the original brief.

The competition asked architects, designers and homeowners to submit homes completed in the past five years that demonstrated “design excellence, ambition, imagination, a strong sense of style and a sensitivity to place”. For judges Crispin Holborow from Savills Private Office and Country House Director and Amelia Greene, UK Board Director and Head of Lettings for Savills, the task was a stern one.

“There was great diversity in both scale and geography of the homes we considered,” says Holborow. “We looked at urban and rural homes from Scotland to England’s south coast, compact mews houses to classical and contemporary country homes.”

Parr’s winning entry as the Project of the Year is a modern rural retreat

“Choosing the winning property was a difficult decision, but also a unanimous one among all the judges,” says Greene. “The house is beautiful, but what stood out was how well the architect understood the client’s remit. The brief for the winning house was probably the most challenging of them all and Richard Parr met it perfectly.”

Parr’s winning entry as the Project of the Year, is, he says, a “modern rural retreat”, a single storey building with four separate quadrants based around a central core: one for communal cooking and living, one as the principal bedroom, one for guests or visiting family and one for the client’s autistic adult son who requires round the clock care.

“This house was choreographed around my client’s very complex brief,” says Parr. “They wanted a house that gave their son his own calm space with his carers, a safe and private area, but a house that was also adaptable and that could, when required, be opened up so that the son would always feel part of the household.”

The house is so well set in its gardens with an uplifting sense of arrival and the indoor and outdoor areas merge seamlessly

“It’s so refreshing to see such an appealing modern house in a location where you might have expected a classical design,” says Holborow. “The house is so well set in its gardens with an uplifting sense of arrival and the indoor and outdoor areas merge seamlessly. There’s interest as soon as you come inside too, with lots to see and many ways that spaces can be used. The house does all that the best modern houses should do, providing great light and a thoughtful segregation of family rooms and private spaces.”

Parr had previously worked with the clients on their London house, a conversion of a period property, but for the Chilterns property, the starting point was a blank canvas, an apparently unremarkable rectangular field with views over the Oxfordshire hills and the Chilterns. It was those distant landscapes and the expanse of open sky that first inspired Parr.

“Immediately I saw it, I thought the site was wonderful,” he says. “The borrowed views shaped my initial design, and we sited the house to frame them. The client didn’t want acres of garden so there are meadows and soft, landscaped banks, while for the house itself we took the Oxfordshire vernacular of local structures, using brick and black-painted timber. It’s a relatively modest house, a landscape sculpture at one with its surroundings. It is not conventional but it also is in no way challenging or trendy”.

The gardens reflect and respect the property’s design thoughtfully

For Holborow and Greene from Savills, one of the property’s chief attributes is how it works on many different levels.

“Our feeling was that the gardens were a great asset to the house,” adds Greene. “They reflect and respect the property’s design thoughtfully.”

For Parr, what excites him most about the property is the way it fits his client’s needs and lifestyle. “They get real joy from the house. It’s transformed their life,” he says. “Designing any house with clients is a journey. We start with sketches and adapt as we go, fitting the design around them. It’s like creating a piece of bespoke couture, a mirror of what the client wants. Yes, there are always stressful moments in any build, but our job is to hold their hand on the journey and then, when the project is complete, to let go.”

CRISPIN HOLBOROW, SAVILLS PRIVATE OFFICE AND COUNTRY HOUSE DIRECTOR
CHolborow@savills.com

AMELIA GREENE, SAVILLS UK BOARD DIRECTOR AND HEAD OF LETTINGS
AGreene@savills.com

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