Loft Conversion & House Refurb, Herts.
House Area: 335 m2 / Loft Conversion: 50 m2.
This project was a major ‘roof off’ loft conversion with additional refurbishment and upgrades to the existing house. The house remained in use during the works; requiring a fair bit of ‘lateral thinking’ and sequencing to minimise disruption (more…)
Speculative Luxury Housing Development. Draethen, Nr Caerphilly.
3 no. 5 bedroom houses [320 m2 per unit].
I was employed by local first-time developers to prepare designs for a redevelopment site owned by their family. The land comprised of a pair of small disused quarries containing disused commercial kennels. The site is on the outskirts of the picturesque village in which they live, with fabulous elevated panoramic views over the Rhymney valley landscape below.
The developers carried out all negotiations with the planning authority themselves and secured the necessary conservation area consent and development approval. My involvement in this project was purely office based; I prepared drawings for (more…)
Self Build Family Home. Rogerstone, Nr Newport.
5 bedrooms [330 m2].
I was asked to design a new family home for a client that I had previously worked for doing a factory extension in Caerphilly. The scheme involved the demolition and replacement of a pair of attached semi-derelict cottages in a wonderful rural setting near Rogerstone. The site sits atop the mountain ridge with the Sirhowy valley one side and panoramic views of the open countryside to Newport and hills towards Cwmbran on the other. (more…)
You may have heard ‘boiler scrappage’ in the national news recently, offering £400 grants to homeowners towards replacing old & inefficient boilers, but what’s not immediately clear is this cash is available in England only. Wales are set to receive £4m funding from Westminster and are considering a similar scheme, but details have yet to be agreed. WAG environment minister Jane Davidson said they are “…considering introducing a similar scheme in Wales … taking into consideration the impact on those in fuel poverty, the relative carbon savings and value for money.” If this statement is worked through and grants are actually distributed to those most in need [i.e. those in 'fuel poverty' [fuel poverty = households spending >10% of income on fuel to heat their home to 18-21degC]], rather than the less tangible aim of CO2 reduction, then great, send money where it does most good & reduce emissions in the process. It also ties in well the existing homeowner grant scheme in Wales -
HEES [Home Energy Efficiency Scheme]
I designed a geodesic dome house at EcoDysgu a couple of years back which was the first time I’d properly explored Buckmisnter Fuller & his theories. I was friends with his great niece [Hi Tracey!] at Oxford Brookes university in 1998, I remember playful talk of ‘Uncle Buck’!?!, but never looked beyond the iconic images [like 'dymaxion house'- saw the original full size mock-up at an exhibition in NYC last year on holiday - I'll post interesting stuff from the exhibition later] or ‘got’ geodesics until this recent project.
Geodesics hold so much potential in terms of maximum enclosure for minimum use of materials. Sure they’re unashamedly rational & geometric, but beautiful too I reckon.
These sketches are just me playing around – a geodesic shell extrapolated from the 12m dome designs I prepared at EcoDysgu [I'll dig these out too & post with some useful geodesic links], they (more…)
sketch scheme proposed
EcoDysgu are a holistic education centre set in 42 acres of beautiful countryside near Tondu, Bridgend. They deliver a model of education they call ‘Learning to Heal – Healing to Learn’ aimed to help people increase self-confidence, respect and well being through arts & crafts activities in their 15 acre woodland and surroundings, in combination with on-site alternative healing therapies. The results ecodysgu have achieved with ‘disaffected’ groups has been called profound and been recognised by police, schools, youth services, prison & probation services, as well as parents.
In may 2009 EcoDysgu won the Wales Award from The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health and HRH The Prince of Wales & HRH The Duchess of Cornwall visited to see for themselves.
This is the latest project I’m involved with at EcoDysgu, it’s currently in sketch development stage and is due to progress through 2010/11.
The project is to create 8 B&B letting rooms [to supplement an existing 12 bed bunkhouse] and provide on-site living facilities for two full time staff. This facility will allow EcoDysgu to offer more residential courses and help develop the centre’s revenue stream to safeguard their future.
The Tondu House Farm site has been occupied for several centuries and has a fascinating history… (more…)
arty pics of grass fires at dusk on cefn bryn / 26 Feb 2009
11 March 2008. 20+ ft wave buoys + big offshore
Home extension, Oxford. 14m2
Typical small single storey rear extension to create a larger kitchen / dining / family room. The design created a light & airy open plan space; a great improvement over the existing ‘galley’ kitchen and a huge improvement to the flexibility of this family home.
I must have done a dozen or more of this specific type of rear extension over the years, each one very ‘forensic’ and ‘tight grain’, totally site specific and bespoke, always loads of work for relatively small extra floor areas. It’s definitely quality not quantity that counts with such projects. These projects are some of the most satisfying to get right, but also potentially the most fraught with problems and hardest of all for an architect or builder to make money from!
As a client you’ll definitely ‘get out what you put in’ with this type of project in terms of doing your own homework to help fully explain your needs and expectations, then investing in a good architect’s proper design time. I often spend significant amounts of time and effort to arrive at a solution that looks simple and obvious only for the the client to think all I did was sit down for 1/2 hour and sketch it up! If you seek the best possible [bespoke] solution and want any chance of building on time, on budget and to the desired quality, you really must prepare yourself from the outset and be willing to invest in early design, the earlier the better! It’s at this stage especially that a skilled architect can add value in many ways.
