GROW Home is designed to adapt to accommodate the evolution of the family unit. By providing basement and usable attic spaces the house can be easily expanded over four floors; then it can be easily divided into two parts to provide a fully autonomous dwelling for an elderly relative or flat that can be let to provide extra income. The home removes the need for people to relocate when they want to upscale or downsize, creating inclusive mixed communities. The home works on the hard shell/soft core principle; the external façade made of composite panels provides a hard structural shell, allowing the internal lightweight soft core to be flexible and open. Dedicated service cores and circulation spaces are stacked vertically. The core allows services to be ducted through the home and connected, maintained or replaced with minimum disruption. The remaining floor plates are simple and unrestricted for potential adaptation. External finishes are ‘traditional’ materials with brickwork masonry facades and tiled roof pitches of sufficient fall to ensure that any one of a variety of tiles can be used. Elevational treatments are independent of the hard core so brick, tile, timber and render can be swapped according to context. This gives a coherent integrated appearance and sense of identity. Subtle variations in colour, roofline and façade ensure everyone can recognise their own home and provide people with choice. In street settings, homes are set back from the footpath and articulated with projecting porches, which at ground level contain the entrance door. Timber gates and boundary walls provide a clearly defined private defensible space between the public realm and houses. Natural surveillance is also encouraged through balconies and good visual links between private and public spaces. A courtyard garden to the side of the house makes efficient use of the land without compromising quality of amenity or privacy. Large glazed openings face the garden, orientated to maximise solar gain, provide good levels of natural light, and increase occupants’ feeling of wellbeing. In less dense locations the garden space can be expanded to the rear to create more private outdoor space, while maintaining the relationship between public and private areas.
Eco-efficiency
The home is designed to the Passivhaus standard, with external walls, roof and ground floor achieving U values of 0.1, and triple glazed windows. With these features and an air permeability score of 1 or 2 the house will be eco-efficient enough not to require carbon-based fuels for heating. It will be heated via direct solar gain and through mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR), powered by onsite photovoltaics.
Thermally massive floors with exposed ceilings and window surrounds absorb direct solar gain and any excess heat in the home. This also helps prevent sound transfer between floors. Rainwater is harvested into small communal grey water recycling systems that provide hot water through a district multi fuel combined heat and power (CHP) plant, which will supplement the supply of electricity. Some residents may feel uncomfortable about not having a traditional heating system, but the communal CHP can provide a small secondary wet heating system to reassure residents. Lifetime Homes
By providing homes for a lifetime, GROW Home neighbourhoods can be populated by diverse family groups differing in size and age, creating mixed and inclusive communities. Scattered around the neighbourhood are ‘magnets’ attracting members of the neighbourhood to interact; these can be informal places like bus stops or more formal places like parks and shops.
The primary magnet is the allotments, which enable people to come together around a shared interest to create a sense of place and community, something that is often difficult to achieve in a new neighbourhood. The home is designed so that a variety of densities can be achieved. Dense urban streets can be formed including private courtyard gardens, or the form can be translated into suburban mews. On larger plots the homes can be clustered together around pocket parks and green spaces. In less dense locations, the home can flank rural village squares. |
