The striking Garden Room at Woodchester House, a Georgian Mansion built in 1746, solves a 350 year problem: the owner wished to have more contact with the Arboretum surrounding the house. The solution is an extraordinary glass, wood and concrete garden room. It provides a place of contemplation and repose adjacent to, but not touching, the house. You can now look at both the garden and the heritage listed house simultaneously.

Glass is employed in dramatic and challenging ways with glazing over 5.5 metres tall along with a glass gallery roof supported on glass beams. In some places the pavilion dissolves into the landscape; in others the off form concrete columns and cantilevered concrete ceiling hover in space.

While the huge glass panels seem to defy enclosure, they do not do so at the expense of sustainability. Triple glazing along with solar panels and heating upgrading have managed to almost halve the energy consumption for the whole house. Beautifully detailed throughout, in very many ways, this is a remarkable piece of architecture.