Living Architecture

Spear’s Review

Living Architecture is a company founded by philosopher and author Alain de Botton that builds and lets extraordinary contemporary houses as escapes for people with active minds.

Most of the current estates are in the English countryside, including a chapel-like cottage in Essex co-designed by Turner prize-winning artist Grayson Perry; a long metal-clad house built out over a slope with a swing underneath; and ‘Secular Retreat’, a deliberately peaceful building near Salcombe that is the first permanent building in the UK by minimalist Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. 

The celebration of modern architecture in rural Britain offers an invigoratingly different approach to a large house rental. They offer seclusion and peace, but also stimulation and a thoughtful moment of difference.