Over time - particularly in the Victorian and Edwardian eras - the banks of the Thames have thrown up some pretty confections, but nothing like this. It is as if Kenneth Grahame had decided to set The Wind in the Willows in Luxor. But this is no fantasy. It is a serious house, academically based, logically planned, good to live and entertain in. Its symbolism is spot-on, as you would expect from owners whose interest in Egypt is professional: one of them happens to work for the British Museum among others and is an acknowledged expert in her field. The other is a leading barrister who, you can't help noticing as he picks you up at the station, has a little silver sphinx sitting on the dashboard of his baby Mercedes. There are plenty more sphinxes to come: they collect them.

Outram is no mere decorator or interior designer. He has designed and built big, joyous university faculties in Britain (the Judge Institute, Cambridge) and America (Computational Studies building, Rice University, Texas), and is the designer of the "Victorian Vision" exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This is only his second complete house, but the first, dating from 1986 and extended several times since, is a known masterpiece, built in Sussex for a wealthy industrialist. There are few certainties in architecture, but one of them is this: any Outram building, whatever its function, is going to be hugely interesting. It will be different, it will employ highly-charged symbolism, it will have a Victorian sense of colour and vigour, it will employ new technology in unexpected ways, it will challenge convention, it will raise your spirits instantly.