F irst came the 1980s revival in music and fashion. Now one architect could be spearheading a revival of 1980s houses — a dubious period of architecture. “For me, the 1980s are when developers really started thinking about how to save money, and aesthetics started to take a back seat,” says the architect Andy Ramus, founder of AR Design Studio in Winchester.
So it was a tall order when a couple in Leicestershire, Paul and Jade, bought a rather ordinary 1980s house and asked him to transform it into a modern, minimalist home for them and their son. They had previously lived in a 17th-century cottage and bought this house specifically for its uninterrupted view of rolling hills. The architecture, not so much.
“The house was.