2009 WINNING SCHEMES > Other Awards

 

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One tenet of sustainability is to use the local. This scheme of 26 homes in rural Suffolk has a communal boiler powered by biomass from the area’s forestry. Homes are constructed in timber-frame lined with hempcrete, lime mixed with the hemp associated with the region’s agriculture. The builder is from the next village.

The scheme is even laid out to exploit the area’s fabled flat landscape and low-angled Winter sun. All houses face south and are grouped so that short terraces of 3-storey properties front the backs of 2-storey terraces, always to the south to make sure low sunlight passes over them. Elevations and roofs are clad in a continuous timber shingle and the gable ends are finished in pastels common to traditional renders.

The gables are asymmetrical not just to mimic the gable-fronted Lutyens-inspired houses on the site immediately south. Houses use a passive stack ventilation strategy to vent via the stairwell through a remote-controlled powered light in the uppermost roof pitch. Build Regulations would have forced the stairwell to be closed off in the 3-storey houses if the height from the floor of the building to the roof ridge had not been reduced. This also led to the ground floor being hollowed out, creating a sunken living room.

Homes feel well daylit, especially kitchens in the 2-storey houses which set a picture window within a deep reveal, also making a porch to a side-hung front door. Each cluster of houses has storage in a separate building topped with a sedum roof. The scheme was the result of a RIBA competition and traditional architect-led contract. Homes give the impression of being very well detailed and meticulously built and this feels like the work of a young practice going full tilt to announce themselves. The client confirmed that the build cost of £1400/m2 excludes fees, which included engineer Buro Happold’s for the biomass boiler and EcoHomes Excellent strategy.

The public realm is a mixed story. Car parking of 42 spaces for the 26 homes is provided as bleak remote parking courts. But some of these sit next to the scheme’s other triumph, a range of amenity spaces including allotments, a local area of play and a sizeable football pitch, part of a green space strategy of swales to manage rainwater. A collaborative procurement process, involving parish council and community, has led to not just homes but a shot in the arm for life in this village.