Triangle
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Paul Raftery (website) Download Original
Four terraces of eco-housing built around a triangular open space
The terraces contain 42 homes with a range of two, three and four bedroom houses, and apartments, each defined by robust rainwater pipes and one of four paint colours.
Each house has a galvanized steel portico that shelters two vertical bike racks next to the front door and gabion wall bin surrounds to screen parked cars in the front gardens.
The homes have a range of sustainable features including, air source heat pumps, rainwater harvesting systems and most noticeably thermal chimneys that allow hot air to escape from the homes. The heating is interlocked with a motorised insulated ventilation hatch so that it can not operate unless the hatch is closed.
The development achieves Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4 and have been designed to allow for the retrofitting of photovoltaic panels, which could mean the houses meet Level 5.
As well as the central triangular green there is also collective outdoor space at each corner of the triangle: two community gardens and a carpark.
Data
- Begun: Jul 2010
- Completed: Sep 2011
- Sector: Residential
- Total cost: £4.2M
- Procurement: JCT Design and Build 2005
- Address: Northern Road, Swindon, Wiltshire, SN2 1LX, United Kingdom
Professional Team 
- Architect: Glenn Howells Architects
- Client: Hab Oakus
- Structural engineer: Curtins Consulting Engineers
- M&E consultant: Max Fordham
- Quantity surveyor: DBK
- Landscape consultant: Studio Engleback
- Services consultant: Max Fordham
- CDM coordinator: DBK
- Transport consultant: Pinnacle
- Cost consultant: DBK
- Project manager: DBK
- Main contractor: Willmott Dixon
- Approved building inspector : PG Surveyors
Suppliers
- External walls: Lime Technology
- Windows : Idealcombi
- Timber frame structure: Pinewood Structures
- Roof tiles: Marley Eternit
- Cork tiles: Granorte UK
- Gabions: Hy-Ten