Park House A contemporary new house using traditional materials.
This new family home is a replacement dwelling in the Greenbelt, replacing an unremarkable series of existing buildings which occupied a prominent corner in the village Conservation area. The challenge was to design a building which responds positively to the village context, respecting the defining characteristics of the village, whilst at the same time creating an uncompromised contemporary piece of architecture, responding positively to its physical and its social context. The proposal retains one small fragment of the existing buildings which was originally a public “Reading Room” built in 1885 “for the use of men and boys of the village”. The design responds to the public realm with a series of steep (50deg) pitched gables with stone copings – familiar forms and materials, but with non-traditional detailing around openings. On the other side it responds to the private gardens with a much more open and transparent façade, connecting the living spaces to the garden and open countryside beyond. The dominant material is the Cotswold stone roof which unifies the whole composition, the glass and metal panels of the private side provide a counterpoint, which emerge subtly in the detailing around the openings, and in the staircase “turret” which provides a lookout from the private interior to the public realm. The house design has comfortably exceeded the requirements of Code for Sustainable Homes (Level 4), primarily through the use of simple passive energy design principles, but will go further still by the use of various active energy technologies.
Sun House An experimental rural home
The house sits at the top of the Claverton Valley on the outskirts of Bath, and replaces a low-grade mobile home. The design is a response to the woodland setting and arranges accommodation into two distinct elements. The main volume is clad with rough-cut oak boarding and contains the entrance and kitchen on the ground floor and living room above. A second, single storey wing is faced with oxidised steel panels and contains sleeping areas that open directly into the garden. The grass roof of the bedroom wing provides a terrace to the adjacent first floor space. The house employs experimental construction and technology, incorporating rainwater harvesting, passive and active solar energy, and is virtually free from pvc materials.
