Excerpt: Green House by Hayhurst & Co. Architects is a project that provides a contemporary and low energy re-imagining of a domestic-scale greenhouse. This family-home blurs the boundaries between inside and outside spaces and creates a bold, re-greening of a once unloved site. The project serves as a prototype that could be replicated on other restricted sites or built as ‘green terraces’: providing comfortable, flexible, and sustainable family homes.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] The design for Green House draws on the natural history and verdant character of the site, providing a contemporary and low energy re-imagining of a domestic-scale greenhouse. A family-home that blurs the boundaries between inside and outside spaces and creates a bold, re-greening of a once unloved site.
Site History: Located on an unmade single-track lane in Tottenham’s Clyde Circus Conservation Area, the backland site where the house now sits used to comprise orchards, greenhouses and market gardens. A small area of re- wilded woodland and Victorian coach house opposite the site still remain.
Current Context: The site now sits between two-storey, brick houses with pitched tile roofs built in the 2000s and already sub-divided into flats. The designers saw the redevelopment of the site where Green House now sits as an opportunity to articulate the site’s history for Tom, a photographer, Amandine, a teacher, and their two young children.
Efficient Building Form: Tom & Amandine were keen to create a 5-bedroomed home that maximised living space, a sense of height and access to nature for their growing family: all on a limited budget of under £3,000 per square meter. The simple ‘block’ form of the house was chosen for its material and constructional efficiencies. As well as providing an efficient form factor, the house is fossil-fuel free, heated by an air-source heat pump and with solar panels mounted on the roof to assist with the house’s electricity needs, whilst a water butt collects rainwater from the roof for irrigation of planting.
The Tottenham Riad: A central, top-lit, riad-style atrium connects all living spaces, upstairs and downstairs, and brings daylight into the heart of the house, where side-facing windows would not have been possible due to the proximity of the neighbouring properties. The atrium also assists in cooling the house on hot days through passive stack ventilation.
All the spaces within the house have views out to the sky or greenery. Double-aspect long views are created throughout the house to front and rear gardens and surrounding woodland and trees, creating a further sense of openness that connects inside and out. The curtains wrap around the whole atrium to allow the central dining space to be separated off as an awesome, double-height dining hall as well as providing acoustic absorption to the living spaces.
Planted Façade: The south-facing front façade is planted with bamboo, with sliding polycarbonate screens that reference the greenhouses that once stood on the site. The plants and screens softly filter the daylight whilst maintaining privacy and provide solar shading on hot summer days.
CLT Structure: The house is constructed using a Cross-Laminated Timber structure, left exposed internally. The end grain has been deliberately exposed and growth rings displayed to visually express how the material has grown. The design philosophy extends into the detail with internal doors made from CLT notched into the frame, avoiding door frames and architraves.
‘Green Terrace’ Prototype: Green House provides a prototype that could be replicated on other restricted sites or built as ‘green terraces’: providing comfortable, flexible, and sustainable family homes.
Building Specification: A fabric-first approach has been taken, with a highly insulated envelope and primary structures exposed as final finishes throughout. The ability to expose the CLT structure internally meant that there was no need for any carbon-heavy plasterboard or linings. Working with a tight budget, many of the materials used in the house have been creatively re-purposed from their originally intended uses e.g. the upstairs floor finish is recycled cork-rubber and the external paving is polished-up reclaimed concrete breeze blocks.
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