People can be surprising. And Giles Miller, who with his wife, Sarah-Jane, has built an exquisite contemporary holiday house by the sea in Kent, is one such person. Woven House – all crystal-clear glass and cantilevers – is, of course, not the house we’re here to talk about, however. Rather, we’re interested in one with a few more winters behind it, shall we say, “without a single straight line anywhere,” Giles remarks. It’s 300 years old and beautiful and crooked – and certainly not the house one would expect the creators of a contemporary masterpiece to live in.
But for Giles – an artist and architect with his own category-defying sculptural design studio, which Sarah-Jane runs with him – that dichotomy is what it’s all about. In fact, he thrives on it. “Contrast creates impact,” he says plainly, sitting in front of a marching row of timber joists. They’re almost parallel, but not quite. “And there’s a beauty in contrast too. Lots of my work is about balance and duality – of the interplay between materials and light, and about mixing things that you might not naturally put together.” There’s no reason we can’t live like this too, he suggests.
