The Life Changing Home accommodates change, much like Victorian or Georgian homes continue to do, by adapting to different generations of users. Flexibility is paramount in this design, and adapting to change comes in many forms: expanding, dividing, separating, extending and enclosing.

The home is formed from two houses, one large and one small, with a courtyard at the heart unifying them. This combination allows the home to perform functions beyond the usual domestic role; the small house can be an annex office, workspace, nursery, playroom, or simply an extension of the larger home.

Mews and meadows
Future sustainability forces us to reassess the qualities and viability of both urban and country forms of living. This design solution embraces natural site features such as hedgerows which provide visual amenity.

The larger house faces a large shared open space formed from existing landscape features or new elements. Visual amenity and access to wildlife habitats are made to promote and increase biodiversity. Open spaces are overlooked and provide play spaces for children. Each house forms a permeable boundary with its surroundings, with a sheltered terrace and garden extending into the park setting.

The house’s ground floor is tall and generous, forming a clear link between meadow and mews, with a central courtyard open to the sky. The smaller house opens onto a narrower mews setting formed in clusters and informal in scale. The mews provides a quiet and intimate shared space for pedestrians and vehicles.

Green Home
Smaller-scale sheltered courtyard spaces are also green and sensitive to their location. Rainwater from roofs is harvested for toilet flushing, clothes washing, gardens and car washing – saving more than half the demand from the mains water supply.

Run-off from the site is reduced by providing the annex with a sedum blanket green roof. Hard landscaping is limited for cars, cycles and hybrid vehicles and is integrated and obscured with planting. Pavements and pathways are permeable.

Ventilation and temperature control
Natural ventilation is achieved with a stack effect using the stair void via low level intakes and rooftop chimneys. The intake is acoustically-attenuated to minimise the impact of external noise, but allow a free flow of air.

Thick insulated walls minimise heat loss in winter. Deep reveals with adjustable louvres provide solar shading and control in summer. Wall linings are also impregnated with a phase change material, which allows the lightweight construction to compensate for the lack of thermal mass. A wax impregnated plasterboard acts as a thermal store.

Heating
Solar thermal panels on individual homes are the primary hot water source. Depending on the scale of development, this can either be topped up locally by a low NOx boiler or by a central biomass-fired combined heat and power plant.

Construction
Homes are pre-formed from a series of cross-laminated timber panels. This form of construction allows for speed of build and high performance in airtightness. The panel is compatible with most cladding options.

© British Homes Awards |  Site design: LW design