Harpenden, in Hertfordshire, about 10 minutes' drive from St Albans, is the very essence of green-belt commuter land. It is stuffed full of what the late Nikolaus Pevsner, the architectural historian, dismissed as "phoney, half-timbered residences of well-to-do Londoners". You certainly would not imagine it had any connection with Scandinavia, let alone Sydney, Australia. But it does. For in the middle of all that mock Tudor is a radical, now GradeII-listed 1962 house designed by the Danish mastermind of the Sydney Opera House. And it is up for sale.
This property, which took two years to build, is a gem: a beautifully built, lovingly maintained classic. English Heritage calls it "a distinguished and beautifully detailed modern house". It's not wrong. The more you see it, the better it gets. It has features that were well ahead of its time, such as hot-water underfloor heating; more than that, it manages to be curiously timeless. You wouldn't be at all surprised to find one of today's hip young architects attempting something that looks similar.
Few would succeed so well. Because not only was it designed by Jorn Utzon, the great Danish architect, it was built for a no less talented compatriot, Povl Ahm. He worked for Arup, the engineering firm, and had the tricky job of making the Sydney Opera House buildable. Before that, he had helped Basil Spence with Coventry cathedral. Later, he was to do the same for Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, with their Pompidou Centre, in Paris. He was, then, at the cutting edge. For his own house, he wanted the best - and he got it.
By the end of the 1950s, Ahm was based in London and had a young family. When he found a plot of land in Harpenden, he turned to the world-famous architect he was collaborating with at the time to design a family house there. Utzon stayed in Denmark, Ahm sent him plans and photographs of the sloping site, and Utzon responded with the design. Ahm then did what he was used to doing on grand projects all around the world: he turned the concept into reality with extreme elegance, creating a little piece of modern Denmark in the home counties.
"My husband intended to be here perhaps for two years, then go back to Denmark," recalls Birgit Ahm, now a sprightly 78, as we sit, sipping coffee, on iconic Egg chairs, designed by Arne Jacobsen, and sunlight dapples the white tiled floor. "We'd known each other since schooldays in Aarhus. We got married six months after he started over here, in 1953. He loved it here, so we stayed."
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The house, then, is a piece of living history. Ahm, who ended up chairman of the mighty Arup organisation, was, says his widow (he died in 2005), as heavily involved in the design as Utzon.
"He started working with Utzon on the Sydney Opera House, and that was the beginning of it. He was an inspiring architect. But this was also very much my husband's house."
It was very much hers, too. For instance, Birgit says, she had clear ideas about the type of kitchen she wanted: smallish, with a walk-in larder, and right next to the family dining table. The mighty architectural and engineering brains of her menfolk did exactly what they were told, putting the larder on the cool northern side of the house, with a serving hatch (almost the only period-piece design cue in the place) through to the raised dining area. Nor was the kitchen tucked away: it is at the heart of the house, between the living areas and the bedrooms, which are on the same level. Everyone walks past it; conversations go on through it. It's a congenial kind of place.
The house, with its large L-shaped garden - 0.8 secluded green acres - has four bedrooms, with a separate annexe containing another two. Overall, that's more than 4,000 sq ft: too big now for Birgit, who also has a house in Denmark, but wants to keep a flat in Britain. Much as her two adult childen (one is in Britain, the other in Denmark) and her grandchildren like to visit her in the house, she says, it's time to move. And my first reaction, when I went to see her there, was: I hope whoever buys it appreciates what they've got. Because under no circumstances must this place be wrecked with insensitive alterations. You cannot improve on perfection.
Let's get one thing out of the way. It does not look like the Sydney Opera House. If you are expecting a roof looking like billowing sails, sorry - this has a gently sloping copper roof. From outside, it is mysterious, set end-on to the road and perched high above a huge drive-in porch. From there, you enter a wide hall and ascend a short flight of stairs, which brings you into something really spectacular: the main living space, 36ft long and 16ft wide. Though it feels a lot bigger even than that, because Utzon extended the white tiled floor out into the garden, and provided floor-to-ceiling sliding windows right along two sides to bring the outside in.
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The house is one long flow of space looking south across the garden, with the later, lower annexe, added in 1972, at right angles to it. Utzon played tricks with the sloping plot. Instead of stepping the house down it, he set it on a plinth, into which he put storerooms and the entrance hall. On the main level, he raised the floor at both ends of the living area, leading to outdoor terraces. The dining area is in one of these, next to the kitchen, with its units in Oregon pine: again, this looks totally "now".
Although it is mainly a single-storey home, the roof is pushed up high, on huge polished concrete beams. As you gaze upwards, the scale is epic. You can tell that Ahm worked on great cultural buildings. At one point, the beams pass right through the glass end wall, a trick he borrowed from another of his jobs, the Jacobsen-designed St Catherine's College, in Oxford. The house is full of original furniture by Jacobsen and others of his generation; basically, the whole place is a homage to modern Danish design. So, that means design that scarcely dates. It still looks utterly fresh.
What's the trick? Not having any paint. No, really, there's hardly any. All the materials are left bare: pale-yellow London brick, rough and polished concrete, timber ceilings and fittings, glass and those white Swedish Hoganas floor tiles - which you also find in the Sydney Opera House. Outside, the window mullions are in teak, which lasts for ever. You don't need paint when you use materials like that. The finishes just don't wear out.
The house is for sale for £2.5m, which might seem a lot, but isn't - not for all that space and that huge garden, in a town 26 minutes by train from the transformed St Pancras station. Besides, what price excellence? You could spend the same money on some God-awful new executive home in a direct line of descent from the mock-Tudor stuff that Pevsner so decried. Or you could acquire a pioneering, listed modern house that has been touched by genius.
But please: don't even think about buying this unless you also buy absolutely into its aesthetic. Because, if you muck it up, it won't just be English Heritage on the phone. I shall personally come round and throw you out.
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The Utzon/Ahm house is for sale for £2.5m through The Modern House; 0845 634 4068, www.themodernhouse.net