Zinc House

A series of interconnecting living spaces link though corner sliding door sets to create an entirely open plan ground floor. This opens on three sides to outdoor garden ‘rooms’ that capture light at different times of the day. A second storey adds a master bedroom suite with framed views of the hills beyond. 

The house achieves an extremely low carbon footprint, with an CLT timber structure and a highly efficient envelope, supported by a 3.2kW solar PV array and ground source heat pump to provide for heating and electricity needs with almost no net running costs. 

The pre-fabricated cross laminated timber (CLT) structure arrived on site on one lorry and was erected in three days. A masonry plinth of handmade brick provides support for two gabled volumes clad in contrasting standing seam zinc finishes, one elevated and the other grounded, and linked by a planar sedum flat roof structure. The ‘townside’ gables are simply expressed in monolithic form, whereas the ‘countryside’ gables are punctuated with large projecting box seat windows overlooking a re-instated orchard with farmland beyond.

The design required a complicated and committed route through the planning process due to ‘backland development’ and ‘edge of green belt’ concerns raised by the planning authority, but these were satisfactorily overcome