The Shoreditch Prototype House is a self-build
project comprising an office on the ground floor
with living accommodation on the upper floors. The
project grew out of the lack of affordable studio and
residential space in central London. integrating, architecture, planting and landscape.
The site is a complex urban backland area and the
project creates its own context in fragmented
surroundings. The white insulated render skin
establishes the main volume of the building as a
distinct new arrival and provides a framework for the
large-scale glazed elements, the precisely engineered
balcony structure and the top terrace enclosure.
Services and circulation are arranged vertically in a
set-back slot aligning with the adjoining building to the
east, and provide an acoustic barrier to traffic noise
from the main road. The top floor is set back from
the north to allow a large glazed roof over the doubleheight
dining area. All rooms have good natural light
levels and principal rooms face south with bolted-on
steel decks providing planted balconies and privacy
screens.
The building minimises the use of concrete and
cementitious materials, which are restricted to the
shallow strip foundations and the ground floor slab.
The main structure is a lightweight steel and timber
frame with infill panels of blockwork manufactured
with wood chips providing thermal and acoustic mass
and bracing to the main frame. Materials have been
sourced for low embodied energy and assembled
efficiently to create a lightweight low impact building.
Floors are FSC birch plywood panels, as is much of
the fit out and furniture. Water-based paints and
sealants have been specified throughout the project.
The building layout has potential for development as
an urban terrace and Cox Bulleid Architects has
drawn up initial proposals for a prototype green
terrace. Tessa Cox and
Oliver Bulleid searched for potential building plots
without planning permission with the aim of designing,
building and fitting out an affordable home for their
family and an office for their architectural practice, Cox
Bulleid Architects.
The project presented an opportunity to construct a
new type of urban home and has been developed as
a prototype low-cost and low-energy house for dense
urban sites. It explores the idea of greening the city
through the use of vertical planting as screen, shade
and oxygenator to create a new 'garden city' typology. |
