Ca’Vita is a versatile design solution for healthy, safe, contemporary living. It can be adapted to accommodate different household sizes, as either:

• a large family home
• a house for two people and an apartment for two
• three homes for singles

These can be adapted further simply by adding or removing a floor in the upper level of the house’s atrium, and other uses such as a shop or office could also be added to the mix.

With a clear internal span of 3.7 metres, the house is akin to a shell. At its most basic, it comprises two fire-resisting load-bearing party walls, together with a perimeter staircase, facility for a lift, a highly insulated roof and external walls, triple glazed windows and lightweight floors. The extent of the floors can be decided by the owner late in the construction and the interior installed. The design can be either prefabricated in the factory or assembled on site.

Each space within the house is accessed from a gallery running the length of the house against a cross-wall. The house can be extended simply by adding a canopy over the roof terrace. The three-storey house can even be stacked to create higher density housing for inner city areas.

The house can be equipped with cost-effective renewables, and clusters of houses could use combined heat and power. Stand alone or small terraces would have photovoltaic and solar thermal panels. The house plan can be handed to optimise solar orientation, shelter or view. Technologies to reduce carbon would be selected according to the location of the house and its community.

The economic form of the house, its straightforward assembly, simple jointing and impermeability of construction should all aid the achievement of an airtight structure. Whole house ventilation, driven by gravity, wind and low energy fans will allow passive heat recovery.

The fair-faced structural walls act as a thermal store in winter, keep the house cool in summer and provide a buffer against external temperature variations. The walls’ density also minimises sound transmission between dwellings.

Rainwater is collected direct from the roof and gravity filtered and fed for washing, toilet flushing and watering the garden.

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