The four bedroom house was prefabricated off site and constructed on the site of an old water tower on the edge of the village of Chieveley in West Berkshire.
With its large windows and generous living spaces, the four bedroom family house is a comfortable, contemporary interpretation of the locally found historic timber framed buildings it draws inspiration from. It is designed so that when seen from a distance it reads as a simple, traditional, agricultural building, but on closer inspection it reveals itself as a crisply designed, carefully made, contemporary home.
The building is two storeys high, with a gabled roof and a facade of black-stained timber weatherboarding.
The roof is clad with zinc standing-seam panels. The aim is for photovoltaic or solar thermal panels to eventually be fixed to its surface, which would allow the building to produce all of its own energy.
"The house is as easy to live in as any normal home, yet costs virtually nothing to run and could be entirely self-reliant if a suitable number of photovoltaic and solar thermal panels were fitted to the roof." says the Architect.
The layout of the building is fairly typical, with living spaces on the ground floor, and bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs. The staircase forms the centre of the plan, separating the living room from the kitchen and dining area, and framing a utility room and study nook.
All of the bedrooms bar the guest room (which has an attic with storage and plant above it) take advantage of the roof form to create a feeling of space.
Windows and glass doors puncture all four facades, but are triple glazed to prevent heat loss. The smallest openings are on the north facade, where the most heat escapes, and on the east elevation, to preserve residents' privacy.
The triple-glazed windows are openable, debunking the Passivhaus myth that the house must always be closed and external blinds are automatically deployed on the east, south and west elevations when the internal temperature of the house reaches 21 degrees, thus reducing the chance of overheating.
Unusually for a Passivhaus it is orientated to the west to take advantage of beautiful views over open countryside, and its warm and characterful interior shows how bright and joyful life in a Passivhaus can be.
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