Overview
‘We choose to follow the science not techno-optimism’.
Sandy Halliday
The Home of 2030 design competition aimed to attract the best and brightest talents of the housing industry to design the homes of the future. We are proud to have been shortlisted and submitted our research along with Perpendicular Architecture, HLM Architects & Studio OPEN.
Our entry the Janus House is uncompromising in addressing one planet living. This idealism in construction and place making is not an ambition or a luxury. It is a necessity to be embraced, by not later than 2030.
Named after the two headed god Janus our approach is to look both to the future and the past to reimagine how we live in greater harmony with nature. The Janus house combines traditional bio-based construction materials with modern 21st century techniques to create homes that are designed for a post fossil fuel age. Our buildings store more carbon than they emit, contain no toxins, are 95% compostable and are long lasting and healthy whilst also achieving PassivHaus levels of thermal performance. At the heart of our design thinking is a re calibration of our relationship with nature with the explicit aim of creating strong local communities and connections to the natural world.
The Janus House
Straw, timber and lime houses set within a fluid landscape devoid of hard boundaries
The Janus House
View of the communal shared barn space nestled at the heart of a cluster of homes
Competition Team Statement
Janus leapfrogs the ‘take-make-waste’ culture of the last 70 years to define a new era of ecological building and professionalism. An example of our approach is carbon sequestration in plant based materials – cheap proven science. Where sequestration in underground caverns is a willful, unproven, technological fix that has potential to expose greed, incompetence, dysfunctionality and sharp practice. We choose to follow the science not techno-optimism.
We are content that further proof of concept should be required by any team aiming to deliver 2030 Homes and believe this will lead to design innovations and modifications. It is an absolute necessity that this competition reach well beyond its current boundaries to be within the capacity of our industry to be part of the solution. No-one should underestimate the extent of change required, nor the challenge this represents. We do not. We cannot any longer spend time fixing the stitching on the deckchairs of the titanic.
We have proposed radical solutions but none without precedent. Let us build the future as we need to build it. To fail now is to fail forever.
Masterplanning
The Janus House Communities
Human society and the beauty of nature are meant to be enjoyed together.
Ebenezer Howard, 1898
The Janus House Community is planned as a development where the built environment and the natural environment are brought together to form a strong sense of place. The masterplan, landscape, building typologies and natural materials used create a harmony between people and nature, and between people within the community. Overall, our neighbourhoods are designed to promote a healthy and happy life for their residents. Overall our approach is maximalist nature and minimalist built environment within the competition density requirements.
Swales & pond distribution
Distinct planting zones for greater biodiversity
Map of private, semi private and public spaces
Hierarchy of access routes
Allowance for flexible and future expansion
Community asset locations
The masterplan has been developed as a series of clustered communities made up of small groupings of residential buildings each with their own community space. Every residential unit still has use of a private garden area where residents can sit and enjoy their own space, and which offers the potential for personalisation and a sense of ownership and belonging. A range of garden sizes is designed to offer choice and respond to people’s varying preferences and abilities to maintain a garden. Instead of being landlocked to the rear of properties, gardens adjoin and overlook the public realm, giving a sense of expansive green space for all, regardless of the size of their individual private garden. This blending of private space into public space helps to keep the development tenure neutral, with fewer barriers (real or perceived) enabling more social integration. Alongside the residential units we have proposed a varied set of com-munity and ancillary buildings to create vibrant ‘cities of short distances’. These include func-tions such as cafés, a woodland forest nursery, a gallery, a library, multiple and various forms of business units, workshops, and retail spaces.
The built environment is woven together with a rich tapestry of nature making use of extensive swales, ponds, tree canopy and planting that are imagined as a series of distinct habitats each different to the other to maximise the biodiversity.
The Janus House
Masterplan Site Section
Housing Concept
All of the buildings within our masterplan share the same simple pitched roof form and are constructed using a single methodology. By keeping the form and construction methodology simple and efficient, we can introduce a large variety of primary typologies, each with their own scope for variations to ensure that the masterplan optimises qualities of simplicity and complexity. All of the housing typologies share a level of generosity by creating a variety of shared communal functions that are aimed at creating strong community links and flexibility to cope with changing habits and world.
Typology A
Micro Tower
Building regulations are due to change. This will limit the potential height of timber frame or mass timber buildings from the current six storeys to effectively three storeys. This would put the UK housing sector on an entirely different path to the rest of Europe and North America where suitably certified timber frame and mass timber construction is becoming ever more prevalent and continues to reach new heights.
Our six storey Micro Community House building is compliant within current Building Regulations but will not be in the future. At competition level, we have chosen to propose this building to raise our concerns about the changes to Building Regulations. The complexity here is the need to consider both fire safety and how we build taller buildings without the use of energy and carbon intensive materials such as concrete and steel. It is entirely possible to design and construct medium height buildings using natural building materials.
The Micro Tower is designed with compact apartments that share larger communal areas amongst all residents. Each apartment is also provided with outdoor balcony space behind a perforated façade.
Typical Plan
Axo
Typology B
Barn Cluster
The pattern of this typology draws inspiration from much-loved farmstead arrangements, where a series of separate buildings collectively form a multifunctional environment arranged around a shared central communal barn building. The barn allows for year-round cover from the elements. The unheated barn acts as the breathing room for the homes to expand in spring, summer and autumn. Kids can play within the confines of the house whilst not being indoors, communal parties, additional storage and general multifunctional space.
The houses are arranged in a stepped formation. Unlike the traditional terrace, this design places an emphasis on each building being legible as an independent form despite being largely adjoined by another. This stepped elevation allows private and public garden spaces to expand and shrink across the site, allowing for a greater variety of spaces between buildings and adds a distinct character. It is true that a terrace is thermally more efficient but through the use of high performing straw building envelopes, the design is able to meet Passivhaus design criteria. Each cluster is an aggregate of four buildings, containing a mix of flats, duplexes and houses and arranged around the communal barn structure.
The Janus House Type B – Greenhouse Cluster
The Janus House Type B sample layout
Typology C
Intergenerational Courtyard Houses
Courtyard housing has existed across cultures and time periods. From ancient Rome to the Middle East, from Chinese Hutongs to more local and recent examples in the UK it remains an evocative typology, presenting the opportunity for interplay between public and private realm, and interior and exterior spaces. This presents an ideal solution for some of our current social issues.
Our intergenerational courtyard typology offers those who wish to live close to their family members, (and potentially care for them) the opportunity to live in houses that are separate but connected by a shared courtyard garden. This addresses concerns over two prevalent issues in society: loneliness and isolation of older people, and childcare issues among working age people. By living next door, grandparents are more available to look after grandchildren and, over time, children can more easily care for their elderly parents.
It is not uncommon for older generations to assist the younger financially with their housing needs, and the option to buy a single property containing multiple homes will appeal to many multi-generational families.
The Janus House Type B – Greenhouse Cluster
The Janus House Type B sample layout
Intergenerational Courtyard Houses
Technical Design
All of the building designs are constructed using a simple pitched roof form for simplicity and to avoid complex details. The design invests in a Fabric First approach using only bio based materials. The building will be 95% compostable by volume as it is built using timber frame, straw and timber fibre insulation, lime and metal roofing. The envelope is designed as a highly insulated, quick to assemble bio based solution.
The Roof
The roof is designed using standardised Steico I-Joists and timber beams to make a rigid high strength structure without the need for using mass timber to reduce our demands on our forests. This is then filled with Steico Zell and an additional layer of wood fibre board to 60mm to the outer face ensures the structure is always on the warm side. An internal VOC free board is used for racking and airtightness. A low cost, recycled and recyclable thin wall metal roof is applied over a vented cavity.
Walls & Floors – Kit Form
To speed up site assembly, panels can be factory assembled with windows, air tight membrane, weather proofing, and partially finished with wood fibre and wall coverings. Panels can be factory assembled and arrive as complete wall sections. Prefabricated ringbeams, factory constructed from Steico components can be fitted to the pre-assembled wall panels. This allows simple and time efficient lifting and handling of complete wall panel sections into place. The top board of the ringbeam is site applied. Prefabricated shutter boxes are fitted on site. Lignotrend 290mm CLT acoustic floor system, pre-assembled to 2500mm or 1875mm widths, can be dropped in for simple site assembly. Voids of the CLT floor are site filled with gravel, and acoustic linings applied to provide a high performing acoustic floor system, comprised of natural materials, and 60min fire compartment, ideal for party floor construction.
Straw Panel System
This shows a complete Ecococon straw panel diagram for house typology C, comprised of standard straw and timber wall elements, straw and timber reinforcement panels with integral lateral structure, and straw and timber lintel elements. Panels are pre-assembled in a protected factory environment. Straw is an abundant waste material that is available yearly making it inexpensive but also extremely efficient.
Passive Ventilation
Together with our engineers at Max Fordham, we have proposed a simple ducted air source heat pump solution, using the Edel hot water heat pump by Dimplex, positioned within a utility cupboard or similar, with ducted connections to the facade. The unit extracts heat from external air via ducted connections to the facade and uses a heat pump to generate hot water. Space heating will be direct electric, via the decarbonised UK grid, or local PV sources via on site storage batteries. As the building fabric is incredibly high performing, the heating requirement will be low. This hot water and space heating solution is seen applicable to all low density house typologies. Furthermore, we are interested in exploring the possibilities of a passive ventilation system, worthy of consideration with the age friendly homes. This system by Ventive, utilises a wind hive with heat recovery, and a wall mounted louvered vent, with a heating coil that can be linked to space heating system, to temper the incoming air. It is a cloud based intelligent system to control fresh air supply, and extract of unwanted air toxicities, and year round comfort for night time cooling in summer, and heat recovery of up to 72% in winter. With all house typologies, any ventilation system is proposed alongside large openable windows on southern orientation for the benefits of solar gain, as well as for summer ventilation, and for purge ventilation. Again with all house typologies, kitchen extract hoods to be recirculating type to avoid additional penetrations in the external fabric.
Mechanical Ventilation
Together with our engineers at Max Fordham, we have proposed a hot water and space heating solution more applicable to the higher density house typologies of A, B & D (Typology C shown here for indicative purposes only). The strategy utilises a Kensa ground source heat pump system with a communal ground source array that serves multiple homes. Each house on the GSHP network to be fitted with the Kensa ‘Shoebox’ heat pump, a system so compact that it fits inside the airing cupboard or kitchen cabinet. The homes would benefit from the enhanced energy efficiency of a heat pump system, and help the site meet carbon zero targets. Connected to the heat pump, we propose a Mixergy hot water and heating cylinder, an innovative cylinder design to optimise energy consumption, coupled with a cloud-based system, with machine learning to enable intelligent control over water usage. Shown here is mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, the principal ventilation strategy throughout most of the house typologies. Extract points on bathrooms, utility cupboards and kitchens, supply points in living rooms and bedrooms. The MVHR unit should be positioned in a utility cupboard or similar, against the external wall. Exhaust and Intake positions in the external wall should be as close as possible to the MVHR unit to reduce the length of cold ductwork between the unit and the facade.
Typical Sections
The building design allows for a continuous line of insulation and elimination of cold bridge points through the use of thick monolithic systemised components. All of the materials are bio based other than membranes and glues. All the materials are low VOC and solutions for minimal or no concrete below ground have been explored to further reduce the impact of the buildings.
Bio Based Materials
Project information
Project
The Home of 2030, RIBA National Competition
Location
UK
Status
Finalist shortlisted entry, 2020
Sector
New Build / Masterplanning
Render Imagery
at_replica
