Hasta La Ideas

London studio Hayhurst and Co. used pale white larch to wrap walls and furnishings both inside and outside this beach house-inspired extension to a family residence in Hampstead, north London.

Hayhurst & Co. added the two-storey extension to the rear of a four-storey Victorian property that had previously been converted into a pair of maisonettes. Named Hampstead Beach House, it replaces an older brickwork extension to provide extra rooms for the downstairs residence.

“Our clients wanted to reconfigure their home over the ground and first floors of the property to enable a better use of space for them and their young children,” explained architect Nick Hayhurst.

The white-stained larch cladding covers the garden-facing elevation of the new structure. Window shutters are fronted with the same material, allowing them to camouflage with the wall, and a pair of large glass doors open the interior out to the garden.

A large family kitchen and dining room takes up the ground floor of the extension and features a tiled concrete floor that extends beyond the exterior wall to create a new patio in the garden.

Hayhurst describes this feature as “a rug” that “pulls the organisation of the internal and external areas together”.

This concept is reinforced by the addition of larch benches and planters along the edge of the garden, which form a continuation of the larch-fronted cupboards that run along the edge of the kitchen.

A new double-height study was slotted into a space in the central section of the house. Lined internally with plywood, it benefits from a skylight overhead and can be closed off from the kitchen to provide a private workspace.

New spaces on the first floor allowed the addition of a second bathroom and an extra bedroom.

Photography is by Kilian O’Sullivan.

Here’s a project description from Hayhurst and Co:

Hampstead Beach House

Hayhurst and Co. have extended and reorganised a house in north London to create a series of bright, well-connected spaces with new windows and light natural material finishes.

For the design and reconfiguration of this ground and first floor property in Hampstead, north London, Hayhurst and Co. started with the placement of a clear, clutter-free new space in the centre of the plan; like a rug in the middle of a room around which furniture and activities are organised. This rug – the tiled surface – extends to the outside and pulls the organisation of the internal and external areas together.

A white-stained larch cladding wraps around the inside and outside of the spaces to form seats, planting beds, storage areas and the kitchen units similar to the way that furniture is arranged around the perimeter of the rug in a traditional cellular room. The cladding extends to form the rear elevation of the extension and includes openings for windows with larch-clad shutters.

The reconfigured maisonette created a new kitchen, dining area, space for an armchair and has a ply-lined study in the middle of the plan lit from a skylight that can be closed off from the rest of the living areas to provide a private workspace.

Originally built as a single Victorian house, this four-storey property just south of Hampstead Heath had been converted into a pair of two-storey maisonettes in the 1970s and the lower floors extended to create extra space. These extensions created a series of dark, cellular spaces with little sense of fluidity between the existing rooms or connection to the garden.

Our clients wanted to reconfigure their home over the ground and first floors of the property to enable a better use of space for them and their young children. This involved creating a new, family-size kitchen to the ground floor with a direct relationship to the garden and rearranging the first floor spaces to provide a second bathroom and guest bedroom.

The property is located within a conservation area in the London Borough of Camden and is a typical example of Victorian terrace housing where the street frontage has retained its original character whilst the rear of the properties have undergone extension, alteration and adaption over time to suit the individual needs and demands of their occupants.

Our alterations to the property provided only 7m2 of new floor area – infilling the remaining return to the ground floor – but allowed the rear of the property to be opened up into a practical, full-width space without any significant loss to the rear garden. The alterations also included a separate study and created an additional bedroom to the first floor.

Architect: Hayhust and Co.
Structural Engineer: Iain Wright Associates
Contractor: Square Foot Solutions

The post Hayhurst and Co. adds beach house-inspired
extension to London residence appeared first on Dezeen.

Following our recent roundup of stories featuring ice and snow, here’s a timber lodge outside Prague that was photographed days after a blizzard.

The two-storey house was designed by Czech architect Martin Cenek and was completed this time last year.

Larch batons clad the upper level and also create brise soleil shutters across windows on the south-facing elevation.

A living room occupies one half of the ground floor and opens out to a wooden deck at the rear.

Elsewhere, steel rods suspend a staircase that leads up to bedrooms and bathrooms on the first floor.

You can see more projects from the Czech Republic here, including a tea house with a tall roof and a combined art gallery and shoe store.

Photography is by the architect.

Here’s a detailed description from Cenek:

House on the outskirts of Prague
Zdiby, Czech Republic

The plot on the outskirts of Prague, protected by a forest from the north and sloping very gently into the fields to the south, seemed ideal for an energy efficient house.

The final design that was developed for this young family of 3 (planned to grow to 4) is a timber house, energetically very close to the passive house standard, employing natural materials, but mainly trying to be as simple and rational as possible. These two are for us also very important aspects of sustainable architecture.

The house is oriented parallel to the neighboring “catalogue” house and creates a clear contrast to its pitched roof and pseudo-classical details, but its ambition is not to overshadow it or criticize it. By its orientation on the plot the house creates a natural barrier between the road to the north and spacious garden on the south side.

The concept was based on a composition of simple volumes arranged into a compact and clear shape. The whole first floor is clad in larch battens which are also used on the shading panels that slide in front of south and east oriented windows and on the balustrade of the first floor terrace (above the carport). This wooden “basket” of the first floor rests on two transverse grey walls – one on the west side and the other east side of the house.

The ground floor volumes – of the day zones of the house itself as well as the one of the garden storeroom are inserted between the two grey outer walls and are finished in reddish rendering. The space between these volumes creates the carport and allows passage between the garden and the road.

The house opens to the south with a terrace directly extending from the living room and connected with it thanks to the extensive glazing of the south wall (glazed in its full length) shaded by means of a wooden brise-soleil. In the future the terrace should grow further to the south and a swimming pool of the same width is also planned.

The north side of the house is more compact and its main feature is a strip window above the level of the flat roof which provides zenithal light to the bathrooms. This sloping part of the roof also serves to mount solar collectors.

The interior layout tries to open up the living (day) zones of the house as much as possible. Sliding floor to ceiling doors then allow different options of connecting or closing the various zones of the house (living and work/service on the ground floor, children and parents on the first floor). The aim was to minimize corridors and lost spaces. The main feature of the central part of the house is a very light staircase suspended on steel rods from the ceiling.

All the built in furniture is simple and white, the aim of the design being to let it blend into the walls and thus give more importance to the occupants of the house and their life.

Click above for larger image

The structure of the house consists of very simple two-by-four timber framing, with all constructions open to water vapor diffusion. All glazing is made of insulated triple window panes in wooden frames (or frameless in case of the living room).

Click above for larger image

Heating – a simple small electric boiler and low temperature floor heating on the ground floor, very simple radiators on the first floor in combination with air heat recovery system. Water is heated using the thermosolar collectors and an integrated heat storage tank. As the heat losses of the house are relatively low, the fireplace in the living room is purely an aesthetical feature.

Architect: ing.arch. Martin Cenek (*1982)
Completed: 2010
Project: 2007-2009

Total floor area: 145m2 + carport 20m2
Built-up area: 120m2 (including garden storeroom and carport)
Energy losses: 3,5kW

Collaboration:
ing.arch. Vitezslav Cenek (garden design, supervision of construction site)
ing. Martin Trmal, ing. Martin Ruzicka – Penatus (production drawings)
ing. Jan Margold, ing. Roman Forfera (structure)
ing. Roman Schneider (heating)
ing. Martin Janko (ventilation)
Jiri Holub (water and waste management)
Petr Manek (electrical)

Selected suppliers:
Penatus s.r.o. (main supplier)
Kauri – Pavel Mikes (staircase)
Jiri Malek and Vestavstyl (built-in furniture)
Esentier s.r.o. (bathroom equipment)

Slate roof tiles extend down the exposed north facade of this house in Wales by London studio Feilden Fowles.

Called Ty Pren, the gabled timber-framed building is clad on three sides in larch felled from the owners’ land.

More trees have been planted nearby in anticipation of replacing the larch cladding in 25 years’ time.

The Welsh slate used for the roof and north wall was reclaimed from demolished houses on the estate.

More residential architecture on Dezeen »

The following information is from the architects:

TY PREN, Trallong, South Wales

Situated in the midst of the Brecon Beacons, this linear Greenfield site in the village of Trallong has a southerly aspect and fine views towards Pen Y Fan. The rich local vernacular inspired the concept of a modern ‘long house’, following the contours of the land, embedding itself in the slope of the hill and responding to the prevailing conditions.

We spent two years researching and developing this design through site visits, models and prototypes. The design evolved into a crisp extrusion using skilled craftsmen to deliver a high-tech building. This period was used to procure local materials, research and to develop our Welsh vernacular adaptation. The typology of the long house leant itself to a passive solar plan, enhanced by the topography and aspect of the site.

Contemporary construction techniques have delivered a thoroughly modern and high performance building, which responds to the landscape. The design was environmentally driven throughout. The passive solar design strategy uses every natural energy source available, and supplements these with active features such as the log boiler.

Project History/ Background

Ty Pren was first conceived in 2005 by our clients, Gavin and Vina Hogg, committed environmentalists responsible for managing the Penpont Estate (recently awarded the Forestry Commission’s ‘Wales Business and Sustainability’ award), with the desire to create a uniquely environmental building drawing strongly from the welsh vernacular.

They placed their faith in Feilden Fowles, a young design team straight out of Part 1 and embarking on our first major project. This precedent of mutual trust and good will underpinned by a shared commitment to sustainability and green design, was shown by the entire design and construction team. This enabled the delivery of an exceptional building, small in scale but with huge ambitions.

The client, acting as a construction manager, had an holistic environmental approach that facilitated the efficient delivery of a sustainable building within a tight budget, and ensured both the design and its delivery remained under continued scrutiny. The embodied energy of materials was under constant review and often took precedent over cost.

Design Approach

Due to the particularly sensitive location, situated on the edge of the Brecon Beacons national park, discussions on the vernacular were numerous throughout the early stages of design. Phrases like ‘sense of space’ and ‘local identity’ are abundant in the current debate regarding Welsh Architecture. Mathew Griffith’s suggested in ‘About Wales’ that ‘…the concept of ‘place’ is located at the heart of a fresh way of doing things. We need to be more effective in defining both the character of places and the value and significance that people attach to them…’

The real strength and identity of the Welsh culture is found in their simple plain chapels and vernacular buildings embedded in the counrtyside, gradually added to and elaborated. We were keen to take reference from these while avoiding simply reproducing an explicit version of the historic vernacular, an approach that would devalue the original. Instead we hoped to reinterpret, not necessarily by imitating historic details or using authentic materials, but through a subtle reinterpretation of familiar forms and ideas coupled with an holistic approach to environmental sustainabilty.

Passive Solar Design

Analysis of the seasonal sun paths determined the building’s location in order to maximise solar gain, views over the valley, and provide a south-facing garden to grow produce. The radical design was backed by a forward-looking planning department, who recognised the potential for the building to set a precedent for future sustainable housing. The compact design is 20m long and 6m deep, forming a sealed box that opens to the south and selectively frames the northern views. Internally, the building is less than 6m deep, enabling natural light and optimal cross and stack ventilation throughout.

The 1 m deep north wall creates a buffer that runs the length of building and accommodates the services, stairs, storage and en-suite bathrooms. The south facing elevation and fenestration use optimal proportions of glazing; approximately 30% of the south elevation is glazed compared with about 5% of the northern elevation. Deep window reveals and sliding shutters prevent excessive solar gain in the summer, while the flush north windows emphasise the building’s clean form. All these measures are designed to maximise solar gain in the winter and minimise overheating during the summer.

Active Design Features

From the outset, we collaborated with “Green Earth Energy” environmental engineers who helped design and fit the services. Over £25,000 was invested in green technologies; nearly 10% of the overall budget, with a further £20,000 on high performance Danish windows. The active heating strategy combines hot water from the 8KW log boiler and the solar collectors in a 500 litre accumulator tank located in the north wall.

The collectors supply all domestic hot water needs and supplement the under floor heating system. A Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery (MVHR) system efficiently ventilates every space during the winter months. A Klargestor Biodisk operates as a sealed ‘waste water processing plant’ in the garden.

Click for larger image

Materials

Ty Pren translates literally as ‘House of Wood’, as timber drove the design strategy throughout. The building was clad in larch, sourced and felled from the client’s estate 2 miles away, and subsequently milled on site. The untreated cladding has a predicted life of 25 years, 8 larch trees have been planted on the client’s estate to replace this when necessary. The removed cladding will be burnt to heat the house. Recycled welsh slates from derelict buildings on the estate wrap over the roof and down the exposed north wall.

Click for larger image

The east, south and west ‘Solar Elevations’ incorporate a more filigree larch skin. The use of Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) coupled with the high performing windows has resulted in a super airtight building. Secondary insulation (Thermafleece) made from a sheep’s wool blend was used to reach a U-Value of 0.15W/m2K in the walls. Internally, locally sourced oak was used on the fit-out, and the entire north wall constructed from sustainably sourced birch faced plywood. Lime based plasters and paints from Ty Mawr lime were used throughout. These natural materials are non-toxic and have a low embodied energy.

Click for larger image

Exterior

The low embodied energy, flexibility and character of larch lent itself perfectly to this environmental house; particularly given that the client, an arboriculturalist, was able to source much of the timber from within his woodlands. The larch was felled just two miles away and sawn on site with a mobile sawmill. It was fitted green in order to naturally weather to a silver-grey, complementing the moorland backdrop. New trees were planted within the client’s woodland when the original cladding was felled, starting a rolling 25-year timber life cycle. The discarded cladding will then be burnt to heat the house, harnessing the last of its energy.

Click for larger image

The solar facades include deep-set window reveals that prevent excessive solar gain, while sliding shutters avoid overheating to the first floor spaces. The larch was sawn into chamfered battens, mounted 10 mm apart and set out on 100 mm vertical studs. This improves ventilation, produces a filigree appearance to the rain screen cladding and incorporates flush eaves details that emphasise the crisp ‘long house’ typology. Larch boards are inserted into the window reveals, covering the window frames and highlighting the punched openings.

Click for larger image

Interior

The plan is modernist in its simplicity, set out on a 1.2 m grid, driven by the standard SIP panel and sheet material size. The continuous birch-faced ply north wall incorporates all the services and utilities, including bathrooms, stair, pantry, storage and solar thermal store. This wall is articulated by home-grown oak studs with shadow gaps running along the datum lines of the house.

Click for larger image

The pop fit doors deliver a seamless and subtle wall, structuring the space. The stair is recessed into the depth of the back wall, emerging on the viewing gallery with direct views north, west, east and framing Pen Y Fan to the south. Welsh oak floorboards run the length of the upper gallery and throughout the lower ground floor expressing, the linear design.

Click for larger image

Performance

We achieved a SAP rating of 79 and Dwelling CO2 emissions rate 5.5KgCO2/m2/ year  – six times more efficient than the government’s target emissions rate for a home of this size. Overall, this 175m2 house produces 968.9kg of carbon annually. Further testing is intended. With a small amount of energy generation on site, this home has the potential to be zero carbon. The logs for heating the house are already produced on the client’s estate. Unfortunately however, the ratings do not account for sustainable timber fuel.

Click for larger image

The dwelling has been occupied for one year now and initial user feedback has been excellent. The building only requires active heating throughout 2 months of the year, and sustains internal temperatures through passive solar heating in the shoulder seasons. We intend to carry out further detailed analysis to determine if the performance meets the projections. A BREEAM assessment is due to be carried out in the Autumn.

Ty Pren is an exceptionally sustainable house, which came about through the close collaboration of the client, design team and contractors to deliver a uniquely local and sustainable building. The intention has been to push the environmental debate surrounding green homes and will hopefully set a precedent of excellence for future developments in Welsh housing.

See also:

.

Het Entreehuis by Bureau B+B	Hunsett Mill by Acme	Wooden House by Atelier Martel