The original plan of Thorpeness sought to recreate a version of a 19th century ‘Romantic and Picturesque’ setting, perhaps influenced by the town planning ideas described in Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of To-morrow, that had been published in 1898. It was laid-out around The Meare, a shallow lake that was created by damming an existing river – apparently inspired by a flood in 1910 that left a large area of standing water on the site.
                     Two architects were employed for the design of Thorpeness; Frederick Forbes Glennie was responsible for the planning, and the design of its principal buildings; William Gilmour Wilson designed many of the houses. The village was originally around 100 houses for self-catering family holidays, a public house, country club, boathouse, church and a golf club.

                     There is a visual unity to the village, although no two houses are the same. Some buildings take an eccentric form that creatively reinterprets familiar vernacular details, but from a wide area of influence that is not specific to East Anglia. The ‘half-timbered’ cladding, weatherboarding, brick and painted render walls are typically protected by steeply pitched roofs of clay pantiles. But the underlying construction of many of the houses uses non-traditional methods including reinforced concrete. Some of the windows are painted steel, and other materials such a concrete block (used to form many of the garden walls), sit alongside the more traditional building materials.
                     To the north of the village, in the area that was once the hamlet of Thorpe, there are some surviving earlier rural buildings. This part of the village has a more layered and varied character, with scattered forms of different periods that are more closely related to the local Suffolk vernacular. Materials are varied; Suffolk brick, single roll clay pantiles, thatch, flint pebble-faced walling, black-stained weatherboarding, render, concrete block and corrugated metal.

                     The sites of the first two houses are on the edge of a Conservation Area, within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Both sites were previously lock-up garages, and are separated by an unmade lane.
                     The scale and informal massing of the adjacent rural buildings, and the planned village, has influenced the massing and the positioning of forms. The higher degree of modelling seen in the houses of the planned village has influenced design details. Materials relate more directly to the immediate context, but are assembled with respect for the design ethos of the planned village. A limited colour palette is used, with contrast achieved through use of materials, and there is a hierarchy to the level of modelling and detail of each form.
                     The arrangement of the new houses, and the relative openness of the plots, adopts an informality that typifies Thorpeness; retaining a sense of the underlying natural landscape.

                     The larger house is a family-sized dwelling with accommodation provided within four volumes, informally grouped around an entrance court, creating a modest scale and massing. The grouping of volumes loosely defines external spaces that follow the course of the day - an east facing breakfast court; west facing evening terrace and kitchen garden; and a further garden to the south and west of the house.

                     The smaller house is an L-shaped single-storey dwelling, arranged with a living accommodation behind an existing flint-faced wall, and a bedroom wing that together define a courtyard garden. The roof above the living room is taller, and the relationship between the two forms is similar to the small barn and connected outbuildings of a former farmyard immediately to the east of the site.

                     The houses adopt a passive environmental design approach, with energy efficiency measures to reduce overall energy demand. A fabric first strategy will include high levels of thermal insulation and high-performance glazing. The design of each house has sought to achieve an optimum balance between the benefits of natural daylighting, reduction in the use of artificial lighting. The provision of passive solar heating to limit the need for space heating in winter, whilst limiting solar gains in summer. Heating and hot water will be provided by high efficiency air-source heat pumps. Natural ventilation will be supplemented by mechanical ventilation and heat recovery, to minimise heat loss during colder periods. Rainwater will be harvested from roofs, with buried tanks and water butts providing storage for irrigation.