Lavington House

The addition conforms to the scale and height of the host building but differentiates itself with a facade reflecting its character as an assembled, modern building. The ground floor includes an entrance hall, cloakroom, lavatory and pantry as well a large living kitchen diner with glazing around the perimeter.

The space is arranged to interface with the garden and capture views of the surrounding fields and Downs beyond. On the first floor, there are two new bedrooms, a family bathroom and further master bedroom. What was previously the master bedroom within the existing building has been repurposed as a generous master en suite with long views. Included in new circulation linking the old and new buildings is a modest gallery that provides a vertical connectivity allowing sound to travel and improving way-finding.

A budget below £150,000 including vat fees and costs was considered sufficient to deliver around a third of the clients brief using traditional methods and procurement. Rather than reducing the brief demanded of them, the practice studied the elemental costs of buildings and precedents in the governments '40k home competition' and studied prefabricated buildings made from only whole unit construction materials.

The practice found efficiencies by removing superfluous construction layers by re-arranging and simplifying constructions systems with a view to reducing waste. The roof is unusually pitched and warm with a ceiling installed over exposed timber, similarly the walls are 400mm thick fully filled with mineral wool utilising specialist ties to reduce the need for further internal or external wall insulation.

The practice took a central role fulling many of the duties normally assigned to main contractors to directly appoint suppliers and tradesmen to oversee an “assembly” rather than the crafting of the building on site. The project was a case study for the practice; testing how architects could take a more central role in construction to improve the use of raw material and get design outcomes. The outcome is riddled with lessons and opportunities for improvement but there is little doubt that the strategic objectives of the project were met.

The process has highlighted that the status quo in the domestic construction industry needs to be questioned and the practice is applying the lessons in current and future works.

Annual CO2 emissions data (requested in kg/m2/year) was provided as follows: 8748kg (inc existing)