A contemporary award winning Art Deco style house designed for the sea view

Poet’s View is a spectacular one-of-a-kind Art Deco style new home full of hidden gems, on West Cliff in Whitby. Its creation was the result of complete team collaboration between client, architect and builder and the numerous consultants required to deliver such a successful and iconic building that continues to delight its occupants and passers-by.

The owners Martin Smith and Jo Wise purchased the original Poet’s View building, a dilapidated 1920’s dormer bungalow, and one of a matching pair to the house across the street. They appointed the ambitious York-based architect Daniel Harvey from StudioDH, who proposed 2 options – refurbish or demolish and start again!

It was agreed that the more daunting new build option would present more opportunity to create something magnificent that could take advantage of the panoramic sea views from Whitby Abbey to Sandsend and the headland beyond and achieve the key objectives of the project brief.

The Council’s planning department supported the proposals and approval was quickly recommended and ratified by the planning committee, who welcomed the design ambition, recognised that the proposal responded well to the public realm with appropriate scale, excellent design vision and considered social value.

Whitby based contractors Oak Construction commenced work October 2020 the depths of winter and swamped with knee-deep mud whilst battling extreme weather conditions and took 14-months to complete whilst the client cruised around the country on their narrow boat communicating to the team by Zoom.

Numerous challenges needed to be overcome during the design and construction process, but this helped to shape such a unique building right from the beginning and drove the team to create something special. This included working with a tricky site; detailing an irregular shaped building; maximising sea views whilst maintaining privacy and delivering a building that could withstand hurricane force 2 winds and extreme weather!

The house offers some unique experiences including a huge 5m-long “horizon window” and glazed circular turrets where you can watch the sun rise from the sea and the set back into the sea across the living wildflower roof, which is one of the only locations in the UK where this can be observed.

Other interesting original internal features include an “S-shaped” locally crafted wrought iron spiral stair, and huge glazed panels between the house and garage so the clients beloved vintage cars can be always on display from the dinner table!

One of the key aspirations of the client was to contribute to society as much as they could by spending every penny possible in town and surrounding area, so all the trades, skills and materials were locally sourced.

As well as a stimulating place to live, the house is designed to be flexible and can robustly adapt to the changing needs of the user to become fully accessible. With a total of 4 ensuite rooms, 2 on each level, means this is a 4-bedroom house or currently 2-bedrooms with a multi-purpose room and a glamorous dressing room with a stunning gold bath.

Brief: The client wanted their dream house built on a cliff top location in Whitby

Daniel Harvey was introduced to us by mutual friends as a young but enthusiastic architect, with the strong recommendation that we should at least explore his ideas for our project. Our brief to him was simple – “make the most of the sea views, build it strong to withstand the weather, a beautiful bathroom and dressing room, and our classic cars sharing our home.” I defined the desired style as “seaside architecture, like all the houses I remember from my childhood – big, white, black windows and a turret.” (You just gotta have a turret!)

 At the first try Daniel absolutely nailed it. We engaged him without hesitation to develop the detailed plans and to project manage the entire process. Now the house is complete, we are in awe of his ability to have seen right from the start exactly what we wanted (probably clearer even than we did) and then to bring it to pass; our decision to place ourselves in his hands has been entirely vindicated. He was determined in the face of our doubts, he resisted budget cuts when we started to lose our nerve, he explained things to us at all stages, he was confident without being arrogant, and he never faltered once in his vision of what was needed to make the most of the fabulous site overlooking the North Sea.

 Newly starting his own practice in York, Daniel was untiring and conscientious from the start, working closely with our builder Rob Davies (Oak Construction). Although two completely different characters, Daniel and Rob bonded quickly and complemented each other perfectly; it was heart-warming to watch their professional relationship, friendship and mutual respect develop during the build.

 Daniel’s capacity for detail seemed endless. His project management and resource finding skills were exemplary throughout. He sourced all major elements from the best suppliers in the most cost-effective way. Such was our confidence in Daniel that from foundations level onwards we left him and the builder to it, spending our time travelling the canals of England on our narrowboat. We spoke regularly on the phone and visited on site just one day each month to make decisions on Daniel’s proposals and to check progress. This proved a supremely workable solution for all concerned and saved us from all those costly mind-changes that clients are prone to introduce.

 Above all else, we enjoyed working with Daniel. Always positive, unerringly enthusiastic, a constant ball of energy, nothing was ever too much trouble for him. Daniel rarely if ever brought us problems, he was always ready with the solution to any challenge before we even knew of it. But the biggest test of all – would we work with him again? Absolutely. He’s a very clever man and a consummate professional.

 We were complete novices to building and I know we couldn’t and wouldn’t have achieved our aim of creating our dream home – this dream home – without Daniel. We thank him unreservedly.

 Martin Smith MBE and Jo Wise – “The clients”

The very exposed costal location meant we needed to design the building to withstand hurricane force 2 winds and very high rainfall, so the main structure of the building was designed and reinforced accordingly, plus the windows and doors all of high specification and designed to keep the weather out in such an exposed location.