In 2000 Crescent House won the Moet & Chandon Award (the precursor to the RIBA Manser Medal) for the best one-off house designed by an architect for a private client. The brief for this new house was that it must be warm in winter and not too hot in summer, it must feel spacious and airy, yet utilitarian and functional, and it must be environmentally friendly and low maintenance. All the walls were to be white, all the plumbing and wiring was to be accessible, not buried in walls or floors and it should have the potential for installing solar panels and other energy–saving or environmentally desirable devices when they became economically viable. It also had to be compatible with wheelchair access. The concrete structure of the house, with masonry infill, provides a very high thermal capacity, which acts as a heat store and reduces the rate of temperature change. The walls have 100mm of insulation and the roofs have 200mm, making for a high insulation value. The house is cross-ventilated naturally and the chimney acts as a passive stack as an integral part of the ventilation system in summer. In the 2003 Civic Trust Awards Crescent House received a commendation. The judges commented: “It has two contrasting sides: the NW is a solid convex wall that increases privacy and reduces the effects of wind, while the SE is a concave crescent of clear glass that relates to and engages the landscape” Photography; Nigel Young (07775 644947)
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