Private residence, Lustleigh

The clients wished to create a new modest, highly energy efficient and contemporary home to provide for their own living accommodation and an ancillary building to provide garaging, storage and  work room studios for textile based art and screen printing. The buildings are  single storey structures providing open plan living accommodation, robust vehicle storage, heating plant and a flexible and simple work rooms.

The building fabric has been designed as an insulated concrete structure, providing very high levels of thermal performance, with highly insulated roofing, high performance joinery and glazing.  The house is heated by an air source heat pump, solar hot water collection and a heat recovery and ventilation system.

The built forms are minimal in profile and volume and contemporary in form, and the building floor levels are cut into the sloping ground to integrate the structure into the landscape and amongst the trees of the copse.  The design incorporates curved roof forms in ribbed zinc, sympathetic with the landscape forms of this part of Dartmoor and robust self coloured rendered masonry walls giving a sense of solidity and permanence, whilst allowing ample natural light (and sun) and natural ventilation appropriate to the living and working spaces.

Set amongst the trees and behind the shelter belt planting, the scale of the building is low and discreet and is not visible from most directions.

Contractor:  Character Builders (SW) Ltd