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Modern architecture and Britain don’t exactly go hand in hand. In a country steeped in nostalgia, where Prince Charles’s “monstrous carbuncle” is part of the lexicon, architects who dare to be different often face an uphill battle. True, “starchitecture” has produced some outlandish commercial buildings, but planners are not as receptive to Shards, Cheesegraters and Gherkins on a domestic scale — homeowners are lucky if they can get permission for double glazing on their sash windows.

Thanks to a decade of Grand Designs, however, attitudes are changing. Many local authorities frown upon period pastiche and are encouraging extensions that look different from the old buildings. Last year, when the architects Squire and Partners converted a Mayfair pub into a posh house, Westminster council actually told them to have more fun with their design.

“Planners are more educated than they used to be,” says the Kentish Town-based architect Níall McLaughlin. “It reached a low period in the 1980s, when it seemed architects were there to be slapped down. Now, even in some conservative areas, you find they are flexible and open.” Geoff Shearcroft, director of AOC Architecture, agrees: “There has been a shift. This notion of ‘fitting’ is a British obsession, but there’s an increasing acknowledgment that there are many ways buildings can fit into the landscape.”

So, if you want an extension or new house, but are bored by conventional side returns or mock-Georgian clones, who do you turn to? Home has picked 10 architect provocateurs, from edgy young practices to established modern gurus, who are shaking things up with bold, innovative designs. To make your house turn heads, rather than conform to the norm, here’s who to call.

AOC ARCHITECTUREThe London practice first made a splash in 2004, when it built a modern folly for the film director Stephen Daldry; standing over a stream, on stilts made from telegraph poles, the black timber vessel resembles a space-age bird hide, yet nestles perfectly in the Hertfordshire woods. Chatley Lodge, a more recent project in the grounds of a Victorian house in rural Somerset, is similarly futuristic and pastoral. The angular garden studio is clad in black rubber, with no guttering — you’re not sure where the walls end and the roof begins — and it opens onto a black-and-white terrace in a herringbone pattern. This is an AOC motif, as are making small spaces feel large and contrasting intimate

Stand out from the crowd

With planners finally embracing bold contemporary design, there’s nothing to stop you building the house of your dreams. All you need is a great architect: Hugh Graham has found 10 of the best

areas with epic views. “New houses can feel uncomfortable, like a new car — we like to make something feel instantly mature,” Shearcroft says. “We do that by using found materials and linking the house to the landscape. Chatley Lodge relates to a mature tree next to it. It’s like a stealth bomber. Black works in the countryside. You have stacks of hay covered in black plastic or piles of rubber tires. The house slightly shimmers, like the Tardis before it appears.” BUDGET From £100,000 for a small house to £500,000 for a refurbished home.CONTACT theaoc.co.uk.

CARL TURNER ARCHITECTSTurner is white-hot after his Slip House, in Brixton, south London, won the 2013 Manser Medal. A stack of opaque glass cubes that juts forward onto the street, like a Tudor house, it is simultaneously

geometrical and sculptural, simple but layered. While the London-based architect has completed projects for the comedians David Walliams and Sean Lock, and the writer Alex Garland, his work is not confined to urban cool, metropolitan budgets or celebs. He values “eccentric” and “unusual” clients, aspires to architecture that is “low cost but high impact”, and thinks the green belt is a blank canvas for creativity. A case in point is Stealth Barn, an elegant black studio annexe in rural Norfolk, owned by the artist Darren Almond. The 900 sq ft retreat cost only £32,000 to build, and its “shadow-like” form replaced a concrete tractor shed. Built with sawn timber board normally used for fences, it is nonetheless superinsulated, and its matt black colour — achieved with a Scandinavian staining system — is a stylish nod to the local vernacular of tarred barns.

BUDGET From £1,500 per sq metre for a simple extension to £2,500 per sq metre for a new build.CONTACT ct-architects.co.uk.

DRMMBritish architecture is benefiting from an injection of Dutch flair, thanks to Alex de Rijke, who co-founded this daring London-based practice in 1995. It turned heads in 2009 with the Sliding House, a modern Suffolk long house that adapts to the weather: if the glass part of the home gets too hot or cold, or if it starts to rain on the courtyard, these exposed areas are covered up with the flick of a switch; a timber shroud in the shape of the dwelling quickly slides into place along train tracks. The architecture echoes traditional agricultural buildings, but the eye-catching red portion underscores the firm’s emphasis on

Above right, Mole Architects used stained timber to create a barn-like feel at Stackyard House, in Norfolk. The structure at the top evokes a bird hide

Above, from left, WoodBlock House, by dRMM; Ty Hedfan, by Featherstone Young; Japanese House, by Konishi Gaffney;House in Highgate Cemetery, by Eldridge Smerin; and Chatley Lodge, by AOC. Below right, the House at Camusdarach Sands, by Raw Architecture Workshop

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Stand out from the crowdstriking hues. Colour is also the talking point of the WoodBlock House, the artist Richard Woods’s residence and studio in Hackney, east London. Described by dRMM as a mix of “domestic joy and spartan pleasure”, it has an exuberant facade that mixes green, yellow and white panels; flamboyant shades on the staircase brighten up the plain timber interiors. “Come to us if you’re up for an adventure,” de Rijke says. BUDGET From houses for less than £500,000 to luxury homes for £2m.CONTACT drmm.co.uk.

ELDRIDGE SMERINIn 2000, when the firm converted a 1950s house in Highgate, north London, into a contemporary glass palace, it faced strong local opposition. Then the building was nominated for the Stirling Prize, only the second private home to receive that honour. So in 2008, when they built the House at Highgate Cemetery, another glass spectacular, there wasn’t a peep of protest from the conservationists. It’s several cuts above your textbook glass box: winged corners add distinctive flair to the modernist template; reflections of the lush greenery in the glass make it feel sensuous, rather than stark; and the juxtaposition with the Victorian gravestones next door is striking. Eldridge Smerin doesn’t only dream in glass: the front of the house is a mysterious wall of black granite. And it’s working on a house in Putney made from Cor-Ten steel, which rusts to a beautiful orange, so it will match neighbouring bricks and roof tiles, and needs no maintenance. The practice likes each of its houses to have a “big idea”, and advises potential clients to “be brave”.BUDGET £1,800 to £4,500 per sq metre.CONTACT eldridgesmerin.com.

FEATHERSTONE YOUNGFeatherstone Young may be based off Brick Lane, in trendy east London, but

its best-known residential project is hidden deep in the Welsh countryside. Ty Hedfan, Welsh for “hovering house”, calls to mind Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater: it juts out from a wooded hillside above a river, with a cantilevered living room that feels like a treehouse. The architects like to frame views, and respond to topography and vernacular buildings: though resolutely modern, Ty Hedfan was inspired by Welsh long houses and is clad in local slate and stone. Other projects are similarly organic: a sculptural house in Rutland with a spiralling green roof seems to “grow out of the ground”, says Sarah Featherstone, who has done projects for Anita Roddick and Rowan Atkinson. “We like surprises, things not being what they seem.” BUDGET £2,300 a sq metre; Ty Hedfan cost £550,000.CONTACT featherstoneyoung.com.

KONISHI GAFFNEYKieran Gaffney and Makiko Konishi are partners in life and business. The Scottish-Japanese duo met while working in London for the designer Thomas Heatherwick, then moved to Japan for several years before setting up a practice in Edinburgh in 2008. They incorporate Japanese ideas about flexible room use and blurring inside and out, with light-filled internal corridors and external corridors with roof overhangs, so you can be “outside” in the rain. Their own home has a daikoku, an internal black wooden pillar that symbolises wealth in the Shinto religion, a low dining table with a hole for their legs in the floor (hori kotatsu) and a tatami room with a skylight for stargazing. For the exterior cladding, they used shou sugi ban, an ancient technique of charring cedar boards for waterproofing. Yet their work is not Japanese pastiche and varies widely: they built a gull-wing extension on a Victorian house on the Firth of Forth, and are now doing a dreamy Zen bungalow on Lough

At Pipers End, left, in Hertfordshire, Niall McLaughlin drew inspiration from the polytunnels used by local market gardeners

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Erne, in Northern Ireland. “I’m not a minimalist, but I like simple things boiled down,” Gaffney says. BUDGET From extensions for £30,000 to houses for £400,000 or more; £1,200 to £2,500 per sq metre.CONTACT konishigaffney.com.

MOLE ARCHITECTSThe Cambridge firm may have won 14 Riba awards, but it is best known for its work on the Balancing Barn, the gravity-defying Suffolk holiday home cantilevered over a hillside, and the Dune House, an avant-garde seaside house in Thorpeness, also in Suffolk, both done for Alain de Botton’s Living Architecture series. “We like our buildings to excite and surprise people, and make them think,” says Meredith Bowles, Mole’s director. “People are starting to realise that modern buildings don’t have to be cool glass modernist boxes. For us, it’s about making something modern that has resonance with the place.” Stackyard House, in Palgrave, Norfolk, may be stark, but it is not out of context in its rural setting: nestled in an old farmyard, it has a boxy form resembling a stack of bales. Stained timber adds a rustic, barn-like feel, and the rectangular protuberance at the top, with its visored window, was inspired by a bird hide; its owners are twitchers, who can watch the wings from their master-bedroom perch.

BUDGET Extensions from £200,000; one-off houses £300,000 to more than £1m.CONTACT molearchitects.co.uk.

NIALL McLAUGHLINMcLaughlin says he doesn’t have a style of building, but a “style of thinking”. “How a building looks should be the outcome of how someone lives,” says the multi-Riba-winning Irish architect, who established his London practice in 1990 and cites Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, Mies van der Rohe and Nicholas Hawksmoor as influences. “It has to have a good reason to look a certain way — if it’s whimsical, it’ll look dated in five

years’ time.” The House at Goleen, on the coast of West Cork, in Ireland, forms a dramatic visual spectacle: a series of jagged pavilions clad in Irish blue limestone, it is meant to evoke shards of rock in the landscape, and will weather to match the cliffs. McLaughlin says their “solid, permanent and immovable” aesthetic suits the wet and wild location. Pipers End, in Hertfordshire, is similarly contextual: the long glass house, with a metal canopy, evokes the polytunnels prevalent in the local market-gardening economy. But the canopy has a function: it shades the double-height, glass-walled living room from the midday sun. BUDGET £1,800 to £10,000 per sq metre. CONTACT niallmclaughlin.com.

RAW ARCHITECTURE WORKSHOPFormed in 2010, this edgy east London practice has made fellow architects take notice with the House at Camusdarach Sands, near Mallaig, on the west coast of Scotland. With its angular, jagged form, timber cladding, asymmetrical gabled roof and jet-black colour, it’s pure expressionist fairy tale. “The intention was not to make a crazy shape,” says Raw’s founder, Graeme Laughlan, who spent six years as a partner at Foster + Partners. “The roof was pulled down on one side to try to reduce the visual mass of the thing and hunker it down in the hill, which pleased the planners. A box would have stood out a lot more. And it

works in the landscape, which is rugged, very up and down, and severe, too — jagged black rocks on the beach, and peat and gorse and dark skies.”BUDGET £75,000-£100,000 for an extension or refurbishment; up to £750,000 for a new house.CONTACT rawarchitectureworkshop.com.

STUDIO OCTOPIThe south London practice is interested in “the crossover between domestic architecture and theatre”, says Chris Romer-Lee, a co-founder. Park Avenue South, a sculptural extension to a Victorian house in Crouch End, north London, is a show stopper: the “folded, origami-style shape” has a Japanese feel, reflecting the client’s time as a lawyer in the Far East, and won a 2010 Grand Designs award for best extension. Romer-Lee says its funky shape was also driven by the awkward geometry of the house and site. Ultimately, he cares more about materials, texture and details than outlandish shapes. Take Chalcot Road, a reworking of a Georgian terraced house in Primrose Hill. Its open-plan interior is a vision in white, with soaring ceilings and four-storey windows. Yet the starkness is softened by “incredibly rich” dark stained oak floors. “There isn’t a place for harsh minimalism right now,” Romer-Lee says. BUDGET £1,800 to £2,500 per sq metre.CONTACT octopi.co.uk.

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From top, Stealth Barn, by Carl Turner; and Chalcot Road, by Studio Octopi