Gaunt Francis Architects are proud to have won the national architectural competition for the 2007 Mail on Sunday British Homes Awards ’Home for the Future’ with the Green House entry.
The competition challenged architects and developers to produce a mainstream house type with reduced carbon emissions, aimed at the volume house building market. We felt this to be a good opportunity to demonstrate our pragmatic approach to sustainable design. A distinguished panel of judges selected our design ahead of eight other short-listed entries. Both the National Centre for Excellence in Housing and the BRE (Building Research Establishment) also supported our award-winning entry. It includes a blend of modern technology and well-proven design principles to resolve some of the issues of modern living in a more sustainable fashion, without compromising quality of life.
We designed the Green House as a 130m2 three-storey, 3-4 bedroom family home. All within the compact site plan requirements of the competition brief. Its basic form can adapt to detached, semi-detached and terrace configurations. The interior space is highly flexible to allow different permutations of layout to suit changing family needs over time. It can even provide alternative uses such as B&B or student rooms.
The Green House is a home that looks to the future. For example the heavy concrete floors and walls from aircrete masonry blocks will provide a high thermal mass. Also, automatic external shutters provide shading for the triple-glazed windows. In combination, this reduces the risk of overheating in the hotter summers that are anticipated in climate change predictions.
To minimize heat loss, we paid special attention to the building envelope. We not only wrapped the external walls in 180mm of insulation, but also detailed the envelope to achieve excellent airtightness. To ensure that the interior has plenty of fresh air there is an automatic ventilation system. This extracts warm air from the bathrooms and kitchen, and passes it through a heat exchanger to preheat incoming air from the outside before this is circulated to the habitable rooms. Windows allow a good proportion of glazing equivalent to 25 per cent of floor area. The result is a light and airy home offering a comfortable living environment.
Barratt Developments PLC built our award-winning Green House as a ‘Code for Sustainable Homes – Level 6’ House on the BRE Innovation Park in Garston. The BRE’s close monitoring of the Green House’s construction and performance helped inform the Government’s ‘Code for Sustainable Homes’ agenda.