We English have a reputation for being somewhat eccentric and architect
Meredith Bowles certainly does not let the side down as he drives
me across the flat plains of the Cambridgeshire Fens towards his
home, The Black House. The Fens, reclaimed from marsh land thanks
to Dutch drainage engineers in the 17th century, look more akin
to the wide open spaces of the Mid West rather than the English
countryside and are dotted with large agricultural sheds and barns
made of corrugated tin or cement cladding. Bowles slows as we pass
each one, enthusing about its uncomplicated design, beautiful decay
or declaring: “now that is a shed.”
The
Black House, where Bowles lives with his wife, novelist Jill Dawson,
and two sons, Lewis (15) and Felix (3), is the culmination of his
obsession with these simple structures, aided by his ever-growing
collection of photographs of sheds from around the world. English
city-dwellers moving out to the country usually seek out brick built,
timber-framed barns to convert to nostalgic, rustic dream homes
but forward-looking Bowles wanted something more contemporary when
moving both his home and burgeoning architectural practise, Mole
Architects, out of London.
“As
an architect, the nostalgia for a world past makes me cringe a bit,”
he says. “It is not a good driving force.”
The
result is a cross between the sheds he so adores and a child-like
drawing of a simple house. Taller and narrower than the single-story
agricultural buildings that surround it, The Black House has three
floors that look out west across the velvety peat fields and back
into Ely, which is the nearest town. Rather than a style decision,
the black color of the house is down to the color of the weatherproof
coating applied to the exterior cement fibre cladding. The stark
exterior sits well with the dark soil; the yellow-stained Scandinavian
softwood window frames providing a stylish contrast.
As
well as affording views of the 13th century Ely Cathedral and picturesque
sunsets, the westerly aspect allows for a healthy afternoon solar
gain. The house is not yet solar-powered, but it is designed to
run from photovoltaic cells once this becomes a viably priced option.
At $35,000 Bowles found the solar panels beyond his initial budget
of $299,000 for the project, so for the time being The Black House
is run from electricity generated at a wind farm in Cornwall. This
helps to run an air-to-air heat pump that takes heat energy from
the air, increasing the efficiency of the electricity input threefold
to provide hot water and warm air heating. Argon-filled glazing,
which has a low-emission coating to reflect light back into the
house, reduces heat loss in winter, whilst solar blinds keep the
house becoming too warm in summer.
The
family have found that the low-tech, zero energy solution of creating
a through draft by opening windows front and back is an efficient
way of cooling the house on hot, sticky days. The fact that the
house is built atop concrete piles, which raises the structure two
feet from the ground, also aids ventilation. This has practical
and environmental advantages in so far as the house is above the
sodden Fens soil and there is no need for a damp course or plastic
membrane betwixt structure and ground.
“It
is like a granary,” says Bowles. “Which are always raised
to stop rats climbing up. Same principle, slightly different reason.”
Bowles
is something of a fan of simple solutions, reasoning that decisions
to install low-energy light bulbs and low-energy domestic appliances
all help in the struggle to lessen the property’s environmental
impact. Those materials that had to be imported were shipped rather
than airfreighted and The Black House has built in storage for recyclable
products, such as paper and glass. Bowles runs his practise from
an office on the second floor and Dawson writes in a study one floor
above, so there are a good few screwed up sheets of paper come the
end of the day.
Energy-saving
ideas were foremost in Bowles’ mind when considering materials
for The Black House, deciding that softwood had least environmental
impact. He lessened this further by using Swedish-made formaldehyde-free
Masonite I-beams for the frame. These beams are made from compressed
lumber waste, which is sandwiched between pieces of softwood to
form a sturdy building material.
Elsewhere
in the house recycling is king, with the 7.8-inch thick insulation
in the walls being made from recycled newspapers and the acoustic
insulation mats between floors manufactured from old car tires.
In the kitchen the funky wipe-clean splashbacks are made from recycled
plastic chopping boards.
Bowles’
ability to bring in a sustainable project at a reasonable budget
has not gone un-noticed in the locale, which has resulted in a proposed
scheme to create ten smaller ‘sheds’ for a local social
housing project. UK Government guidelines on social housing are
pushing developers toward solutions that involve low environmental
impact along with the speed and cost savings of pre-fabrication,
so we could yet see stylish shed living become the norm in rural
England. Bowles has his fingers crossed that becomes so, for both
the prosperity of his practise and the inevitable fall in the price
of solar panels that would at last see him able to afford to become
self-sufficient in power generation.
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