by SKENE CATLING DE LA PENA
flint • Volume 13
Flint House is a house and annex commissioned by Jacob Rothschild, lord of the estate and head of the historic banking family. His brief was to provide accommodation for a visiting art curator.
The walls and terrazzo roofs fade in six coloured strata as the flint progresses up the building, from black through to fine shades of greys, and finally into courses of long, narrow blocks of white chalk, where the building appears to dissolve into the sky.
The material was used to clad the walls of both buildings. But rather than using pieces of flint at random, they were sorted into layers of tone, with darker strata at the bottom. Towards the top, they become chalky white to match the pale terrazzo roofs.
"Flint is an ancient material related to jasper, obsidian and onyx; a hard, cryptocrystalline form of quartz found in one geological seam in the UK, and in abundance on the surface of the ploughed fields surrounding the site,"
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