BLACK HOUSE

The open space celebrates the view of the city and the hills in the background. The whole of the north façade is glazed, including the northwest corner; this way the entire view is accessible to the whole living area, dining and kitchen.

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The ceiling is gently sloping towards the northwest corner, this generates a subtle feeling of being drawn towards the outside.

The building envelope needed to be highly thermally efficient as the client wanted a very warm house minimizing the cost of heating.

Heating the house is a geothermal underfloor heating system. It consists of two hundred meter deep boreholes retrieving heat from the underground and exchanging it with the underfloor heating fluid.

The underfloor heating pipes have been laid into a thin concrete screed above an insulating layer on top of the structural concrete slab. This is to improve the heat radiation.

 

The roof eave has been designed to keep most of the summer sun out of the building, whilst allowing the winter sun to warm the floors and the two recycled brick feature walls that acts as thermal mass storing the heating and releasing it through the night. The façade features outward opening windows at high level to allow the heat to escape and generate natural ventilation for cooling during summer.

 

The house has been designed to minimize thermal bridging in the outside envelope. Roof rafters have been increased in size to have bigger spacing between them allowing for better insulation. The timber wall framing has been increased in size for the same reason. The steel work has been installed on the inside of other components to allow continuous insulation around it.

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A glass balustrade has been designed at the interior of the big sliding door so that when this is open the feeling of the outside is carried into the dining area, acting in fact as a covered deck.