January is all about fresh starts and new beginnings, making it the ideal time to plan a self-build project.
Building your own home is a fraught, complex process, but the end reward is worth it: you get a completely bespoke and tailored design, under the market price.
Here we’ve found five exciting sites in the UK awaiting transformation in 2022, including a pair of workshops in Brighton’s boho Kemp Town, a former Georgian chapel in Bath, and an architect’s bold design for a rural Hertfordshire site. Could you fulfil their potential?
Minimalist Markyate home in Hertfordshire
5 bedrooms; £800,000 via The Modern House
Berkshire firm Kirkland Fraser Moor has designed a low carbon, minimalist five-bedroom house for this 2.35-acre plot in the Chilterns. It has a small farmyard-style layout, paragraph 80 planning permission, and local brick, flint and timber cladding finishes. Its four box-like forms have sloped sedum roofs and radiate off an internal courtyard housing a circular glass volume with a tree inside. All around are gardens by The Landscape Agency, designed to enhance natural biodiversity.
Minimalist Markyate home in Hertfordshire
5 bedrooms; £800,000 via The Modern House
Berkshire firm Kirkland Fraser Moor has designed a low carbon, minimalist five-bedroom house for this 2.35-acre plot in the Chilterns. It has a small farmyard-style layout, paragraph 80 planning permission, and local brick, flint and timber cladding finishes. Its four box-like forms have sloped sedum roofs and radiate off an internal courtyard housing a circular glass volume with a tree inside. All around are gardens by The Landscape Agency, designed to enhance natural biodiversity.
Minimalist Markyate home in Hertfordshire
5 bedrooms; £800,000 via The Modern House
Berkshire firm Kirkland Fraser Moor has designed a low carbon, minimalist five-bedroom house for this 2.35-acre plot in the Chilterns. It has a small farmyard-style layout, paragraph 80 planning permission, and local brick, flint and timber cladding finishes. Its four box-like forms have sloped sedum roofs and radiate off an internal courtyard housing a circular glass volume with a tree inside. All around are gardens by The Landscape Agency, designed to enhance natural biodiversity.
Minimalist Markyate home in Hertfordshire
5 bedrooms; £800,000 via The Modern House
Berkshire firm Kirkland Fraser Moor has designed a low carbon, minimalist five-bedroom house for this 2.35-acre plot in the Chilterns. It has a small farmyard-style layout, paragraph 80 planning permission, and local brick, flint and timber cladding finishes. Its four box-like forms have sloped sedum roofs and radiate off an internal courtyard housing a circular glass volume with a tree inside. All around are gardens by The Landscape Agency, designed to enhance natural biodiversity.
A barn ripe for conversion in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
£500,000 via Knight Frank
Set on the edge of Little Ickford village, this large agricultural barn has a simple pitched form and comes with planning consent to be converted into a three-bedroom house, set across a single floor. Plans show its dark-green corrugated iron walls punctured by large square windows and doors opening onto surrounding lawns on three sides. Its metal structure is linked to another barn (owned by the seller) via a lean-to structure, which is set to be removed.
Photography via Knight Frank
A barn ripe for conversion in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
£500,000 via Knight Frank
Set on the edge of Little Ickford village, this large agricultural barn has a simple pitched form and comes with planning consent to be converted into a three-bedroom house, set across a single floor. Plans show its dark-green corrugated iron walls punctured by large square windows and doors opening onto surrounding lawns on three sides. Its metal structure is linked to another barn (owned by the seller) via a lean-to structure, which is set to be removed.
Photography via Knight Frank
A barn ripe for conversion in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
£500,000 via Knight Frank
Set on the edge of Little Ickford village, this large agricultural barn has a simple pitched form and comes with planning consent to be converted into a three-bedroom house, set across a single floor. Plans show its dark-green corrugated iron walls punctured by large square windows and doors opening onto surrounding lawns on three sides. Its metal structure is linked to another barn (owned by the seller) via a lean-to structure, which is set to be removed.
Photography via Knight Frank
A barn ripe for conversion in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
£500,000 via Knight Frank
Set on the edge of Little Ickford village, this large agricultural barn has a simple pitched form and comes with planning consent to be converted into a three-bedroom house, set across a single floor. Plans show its dark-green corrugated iron walls punctured by large square windows and doors opening onto surrounding lawns on three sides. Its metal structure is linked to another barn (owned by the seller) via a lean-to structure, which is set to be removed.
Photography via Knight Frank
A cottage and adjoining workshop in Brighton, East Sussex
£399,000 via Mishon Mackay
Fancy designing a home by the sea? Bear with us on this one, as it doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the plot is a stone’s throw from Brighton’s shingle beach.
The two adjoining buildings (a mews-style cottage and a lean-to workshop, both with secure parking) on Marine Gardens, were once part of a now-demolished tenement building, built in the early 20th century when Kemp Town was a deprived area. Planning permission will need to be sought by buyers for the pair of adjoining sites, which belong to separate owners, however, there is a precedence for this sort of conversion in the area.
Photography via Mishon Mackay/Rightmove
A cottage and adjoining workshop in Brighton, East Sussex
£399,000 via Mishon Mackay
Fancy designing a home by the sea? Bear with us on this one, as it doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the plot is a stone’s throw from Brighton’s shingle beach.
The two adjoining buildings (a mews-style cottage and a lean-to workshop, both with secure parking) on Marine Gardens, were once part of a now-demolished tenement building, built in the early 20th century when Kemp Town was a deprived area. Planning permission will need to be sought by buyers for the pair of adjoining sites, which belong to separate owners, however, there is a precedence for this sort of conversion in the area.
Photography via Mishon Mackay/Rightmove
A cottage and adjoining workshop in Brighton, East Sussex
£399,000 via Mishon Mackay
Fancy designing a home by the sea? Bear with us on this one, as it doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the plot is a stone’s throw from Brighton’s shingle beach.
The two adjoining buildings (a mews-style cottage and a lean-to workshop, both with secure parking) on Marine Gardens, were once part of a now-demolished tenement building, built in the early 20th century when Kemp Town was a deprived area. Planning permission will need to be sought by buyers for the pair of adjoining sites, which belong to separate owners, however, there is a precedence for this sort of conversion in the area.
Photography via Mishon Mackay/Rightmove
Georgian-era church, Bath, Somerset
£850,000 via Knight Frank
Bath’s famous pale stone and ecclesiastical Georgian design combine on the square façade of the former Hope Chapel, which dates from the 18th century and stands opposite a park on Lower Borough Walls. 1 & 2 St. James’s Passage has planning for conversion into a 1,980 square foot house and a 1,537 square foot maisonette. They will lie behind its standout, restored, original church front, with curved door arches and a central trefoil window.
Vacant victorian warehouse in Kensal Green, London
£1.6 m via Chancellors
One of a pair of adjoining brick warehouses, this blank canvas property on Waldo Road had light industrial use. Now it has planning consent for three flats. Inside the building, there is a single, cavernous space which is easy to imagine as three dwellings. Its vaulted roof forms high ceilings and it is lit by a central, full-length roof light and a circular window detail on an end wall.
Vacant victorian warehouse in Kensal Green, London
£1.6 m via Chancellors
One of a pair of adjoining brick warehouses, this blank canvas property on Waldo Road had light industrial use. Now it has planning consent for three flats. Inside the building, there is a single, cavernous space which is easy to imagine as three dwellings. Its vaulted roof forms high ceilings and it is lit by a central, full-length roof light and a circular window detail on an end wall.
Looking for more projects to sink your teeth into?
Woodland Grove by Studio Weave
Studio Weave unveiled its planning scheme to turn a two-bedroom Greenwich Park townhouse into a modernist retreat with a glass-roofed sunroom last year. See more on the project.
Mines Park by 6a Architects
Mines Park is a plot of 100 acres with planning permission to build a modern country mansion designed by Tom Emerson of 6A Architects. The 12,000 sq ft structure reinterprets traditional 18th-century timber-framed English country houses and would be built with an exposed oak structure and hempcrete across four levels. We featured in among our summer edits of 2020 projects on the drawing board and it’s still seeking a buyer.
