The way I’ve long picked my holidays is to choose a location and let the house or hotel follow suit.
asserted
house → pick → suit
The place came first; the roof over your head was incidental.
asserted
roof → come → head
Something has shifted.
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Something → shift → ?
Increasingly, the house is the holiday – pored over on Instagram, booked months in advance.
asserted
house → pore → advance
The location comes second or barely registers at all.
asserted
location → come → ?
It’s a reversal so complete that I recently found myself celebrating my 30th birthday in a village I'd never heard of, simply because the building was extraordinary.
asserted
building → ’ → village
New data backs up the anecdote.
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data → back → anecdote
Nearly half of British families now take multi-generational holidays together in a single property, according to 2026 travel research – a marked swing from hotel-room bookings towards large, self-catered houses that hold grandparents, parents and children under one roof.
uncertain
that → take → roof
And the demand for architecturally distinctive, large-group houses is no longer such a niche, it’s becoming the whole point.
asserted
it → become → houses
One of the companies riding this most confidently is ARC, a collection of five architect-led houses across the UK sleeping up to 30.
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One → rid → 30
Founded during Covid by London architect Tom Leahy, their first property opened in 2022, but the portfolio now stretches from the Camel Estuary in Cornwall to the Peak District.
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portfolio → found → District
The mission, Leahy tells me, was born from a simple insight.
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Leahy → tell → insight
“Research we did found that adults go on an average of four holidays a year – three abroad and one in the UK –
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adults → do → UK
we set out to try to shift that to a two-two ratio.”
The holiday easiest to poach from Europe? The weekend away with friends – the kind where you’re not really there to see the place but to spend time together somewhere pretty.
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you → set → time
We thought: what is it about French châteaux or Portuguese villas that draws people there?” says Leahy.
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Leahy → think → people
“We figured out that really it’s a quality difference.
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it → figure → ?
They were all en-suite bedrooms, they had been invested in.
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they → invest → ?
Kitchens were designed for staff, not for groups cooking themselves.
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Kitchens → design → themselves
So we addressed that gap.
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we → address → gap
It's a gap I recognise.
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I → recognise → ?
Group trips I've taken in the past abroad shared the same ingredients: generous space, considered design, a kitchen built for socialising.
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I → take → socialising
The British equivalent, until recently, meant mismatched crockery and a single bathroom between eight.
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equivalent → mean → eight
I opt to try ARC Thorpeness for my 30th birthday, curious whether a UK house can hold its own against that Continental pull.
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house → opt → pull
I’d never heard of Thorpeness before: a tiny Edwardian village on the Suffolk Heritage Coast, built as a fantasy holiday resort by Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie in the early 1920s, inspired by the stories of Peter Pan.
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I → hear → Pan
Its boating lake, the Meare, has islands named after Neverland; its mock-Tudor cottages were designed for wealthy Londoners escaping the city.
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cottages → have → city
A century on, that escapist impulse endures – just in a different register.
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impulse → endure → register
ARC’s house here is the village’s famous water tower, Grade II-listed and converted in 1929 by architect William Gilmour Wilson.
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house → list → Wilson
From the outside it is imposing, almost ecclesiastical: five storeys of weatherboarded timber rising high above the Suffolk rooftops.
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it → rise → rooftops
The kitchen – Miele everything, double ovens, a vast sociable island – sits four floors up.
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kitchen → sit → ?
A cinema snug and yoga studio occupy the lower levels and the living room crowns the building at the fifth floor, spanning the entire former water tank, with 360-degree views across the village, out towards Aldeburgh and the steel grey-blue wash of the North Sea.
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room → occupy → Sea
You stand there and forget you’re in Suffolk.
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you → stand → Suffolk
My group was spread across eight beautifully-decorated en-suite bedrooms, each configured to feel completely private.
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each → spread → bedrooms
One of the best parts was that – on purpose – there’s no master bedroom, so all the rooms feel equal (long gone are the days of people running to claim the best bedrooms on entry, there’s just no need here).
uncertain
people → ’ → entry
The house absorbed all our attention – it generated more conversation, more shared pleasure, more lingering images than any resort could have.
uncertain
resort → absorb → conversation
On the Saturday evening, we had a local chef come to cook for us, all organised by ARC, we just had to choose one of multiple menu options.
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we → have → options
(You can also organise breakfast pastries, yoga, wine tasting and a pizza night.)
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You → organise → pastries
We chose the ‘farmers menu’, duck magret for meat eaters and sweetcorn fritters for veggies, followed by steak with a parma ham crisp and garlic rosti potato.
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We → choose → crisp
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Offering these kinds of experiences means you can focus on enjoying more time together as a group, my friends decorated the top two rooms with balloons and candles, and no one had to cook or worry about meal planning.
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one → read → planning
During the day, we explored the bookshops and local pubs in Aldeburgh, stopping to marvel at the incredible bakeries like Two Magpies and Lawson’s Delicatessen.
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we → explore → Magpies
“People tend to book ARC who live within two hours’ drive of the house,” says Leahy when I ask who his guests are.
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guests → tend → house
…and 9 more, not listed.
The Aporia
