Inside The UK’s ‘Super Eco’ Home in the Heart of London | RIBA House of the Year 2023 Winner

Nick Hayhurst and Claire Taggart welcome us into Green House in London, by Hayhurst and Co. Architects. This greenhouse-inspired home is the winner of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) House of the Year 2023, which celebrates excellence and innovation in home design by crowning the “best example of a one-off house designed by an architect in the UK.”

Tucked away down an alley in the Clyde Circus Conservation Area of Tottenham, this family home screams sustainability — from the cross-laminated timber frame and use of reclaimed materials, to the recycled rain water used to feed the bamboo which enhances air quality throughout. Neither form or function were compromised whilst prioritising the environmental impact of the design, with both a riad-esque central atrium and modular family area being just a couple of the defining features of this property.

Green House is the epitome of what can be achieved when the client and architect collaborate with a mutual goal in mind. “While the design has changed a little bit, I think the very first idea that we presented in the very first meeting is very much what you see today,” explains Nick Hayhurst, Director of Hayhurst and Co.

Speaking with homeowner Tom van Schelven, Project Architect Claire Taggart delineates how design boundaries were established early on: “The thing that was quite exciting for us in your brief was that you wanted something that was a bit innovative and a bit experimental, and Tom and Amandine were willing to take risks… and that’s always a good brief to get as an architect!” Watch the full video as we tour Tom van Schelven and Amandine Neyses-van Schelven’s truly unique ‘super eco’ home in the heart of London.

Tour Saltmarsh House, another RIBA House of the Year 2023 shortlisted project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbMX7NRrDSs

Director: Skylar Economy
Director of Photography: Daniel Fliegauf
Editor: William Long
Featuring: Nick Hayhurst, Claire Taggart, Tom van Schelven
Producer: Chase Lewis
Producer, On Set: Preshita Saha
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Chloe Leung, Leeya Mirza
Production Manager: Alexandra Dawson Herren
Production Coordinator: Ericka Gourgues-Lutran
Camera Operator: James Maiki
Drone Operator: Barney Clark
Assistant Camera: Kit Mackenzie
Sound Recordist: Michael Panayiotis
Post Production Supervisor: Andrew Montague
Post Production Coordinator: Holly Frew
Supervising Editor: Christina Mankellow
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Colourist: George Dutton
Additional Cinematography: Progress
Special Thanks: Royal Institute of British Architects

#RIBA #HouseOfTheYear #Architecture #London #HouseAndGarden

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I don’t think we have any other option other than to be designing ecologically and trying to actively do as many low carbon measures as we can the issue as Architects is that almost everything that we do in some way uses energy and so really the task is

About trying to reduce the amount of energy that we use both in the buildings as we build them but also how they will be used in the long term we’re in Greenhouse in Tottenham North London we were approached by Tom and amandine about 4 years ago after they bought this site and were looking to create a new family home when Tom and amine bought this plot it had a very badly built 1980s house we did look at ways that we might convert

It or extend it but it was in such a terrible condition that we weren’t able to do that so what we working to do is to try to restore the site to what it historically would have been which is a Green Landscape which had green houses and Orchards and Market Gardens rather

Than the kind of brick house that was here previously whilst the design has changed a little bit I think the very first idea that we presented at the very first meeting is very much what you see today the form of the house was very simple it

Was a block form which gave is the most efficient structure in terms of thermal envelope because it gives it a good form factor which means that it maintains heat and then in terms of materials the cross- laminated timber frame was probably the most sustainable way we could build it structurally the cross

Laminated timber frame was grown and made in panels in Austria and then once it was on site it was assembled within about 10 days which I think helped to expediate the construction process we were working with quite a tight budget in this project and we were very aware

From the clients that there was no no space to go over budget so we had to get quite creative with the materials we were using so there’s quite a few areas in the building where we’ve sort of misused materials or used them in a slightly unusual way so for example the

External cladding is a very very lowcost agricultural Roofing sheet which costs about £5 a square meter made of recycled paper mixed with bitchman the pavers outside were reclaimed breeze blocks bought off gum tree and there’s a jite in Phil on the top which are polished

Down to make them kind of a smooth paper but they’re quite beautiful for what they used to be also the flooring upstairs is cork rubber originally designed for industrial gaskets it’s a kind of natural ecopop combination with the the natural materials but then the kind of the

Piness of the green and then obviously the curtains as well kind of add a sense of fun to the project When we first briefed heurst and Co by the project we tried to keep the brief as open as possible there’s a few reasons for that one I think creatively it’s nice to kind of let people run with it with their own ideas secondly was budget we we knew our budget was very

Limited and so we wanted to give you guys the biggest kind of uh free way to use that budget efficiently I think the thing that was quite exciting for us in your brief is that you wanted something that was a bit Innovative and a bit experimental and Tom and am de were

Willing to take risks and do details and things that maybe we hadn’t done before either and that’s always a good brief to get as an architect um and quite Fun so this space we like to affectionately call the Tottenham Riad and it has a number of purposes in terms of its design number one it brings daylight in from above where side facing Windows wouldn’t have been possible due to the neighboring houses it also serves to connect all of the upstairs bedrooms

With the downstairs living space so it’s really kind of the heart of the home when you’ve got two young kids it’s pretty amazing we kind of feel constantly connected to what they’re doing without being on top of them there’s nothing they like more than running laps around the gallery space up

There I think we were a bit worried about noise and Acoustics in the house so you guys came up with the idea of using these curtains um which not only visually helped to separate spaces so we can pull this curtain across here and pull that curtain over there it also really helps

With the Acoustics it’s also to be able to separate this Central space off as a kind of quite cool double height space and also gives a bit of flexibility to divide off the living spaces and again two young kids who are quite loud we really noticed the benefit of having some soft

Furnishings as we use the house in different ways different little elements of fun kind of pop up which I think is important in architecture often gets overlooked for the kind of seriousness of the practice so this is the living room this area feels really nice and hunkered down

We’re 60 cm below the ground level here so when we sit on the sofa it feels really cozy and so part of the concept of the House of kind of feeling like you’re living in the landscape and rather than doing the kind of conventional contemporary thing which is to have big

Wide open glass doors onto a patio what we decided instead was to bring the plant close to the house so you feel like the garden is part of the house or that you’re part of the Garden so now we’re in the back Garden we designed this with a friend of ours who’s an amazing Garden designer called olle Alan he really helped make a lay out that gave us these little rooms and these really dense beds but also had space for the kids to run around and

Play he was very good at hiding some little exciting features like our 10t tall toy dinosaur which is covering the kids Treehouse which is through this little kind of secret path the garden is a really nice layering from the house so it feels like another room of the house

The front garden has a kind of more Mediterranean feel it’s kind of the Sunny Side whereas this Garden definitely feels quite Lush and tropical and it’s a bit wild as well I quite like that about it it’s also 90% of it is Evergreen so it stays like this all year

Round little spot there we we spend a lot of time on summer days hanging out there while the kids are playing in paddling pools and making a Mess so now we in the kid kitchen for Budget reasons we stuck to a not super expensive High Street chain kitchen but to give it that little kind of extra pop this is made out of a product called jasm knite which is a polymer modified concrete that has marble so it makes it

White but it means you can kind of add pops of color so we really like the idea of using recycle glass recycle Pebbles gravel old chippings of marble so we made IG tiles smashed them up and then put them in mold and made the kitchen basically had a very long lockdown where

I couldn’t work so this this became my hobby I guess early on when we talked about the layout you wanted to be able to be cooking here and then have full sight of the house so you can see out to the front garden from here you can also

See out to the back garden and over the Central Dining space so whoever’s in here cooking is not isolated from the rest of the house and the family while they’re in here So this is the primary Suite it’s an amazing place to wake up and a big part of that is this bamboo wall it feels really private and it feels like we’re in nature part of the design for this was to provide a kind of natural privacy screen without having to constantly be

Opening and closing curtains and it provides that in a beautiful way in that you’re looking out into Greenery this is also the south facing elevation of the house we were aware that we wanted to make sure these bedrooms were properly shaded so there’s an overhang over the facade which protects these

Windows from high hot summer sun and the bamboo also serves as a light shading device so you get this kind of quite cool dappled sun and soft shading in the bedrooms and the polycarbonate screens on the outside of that which enables them to close off the bedroom and provide this completely private but

Tropical Oasis and that’s something we do a lot in Winter we’ll close the polycarbonate and then we won’t actually use these curtains at all the bamboo really helps with conditioning the air it gives us nice fresh air coming through all the water for the bamboo throughout the

House is reused rain water that we collect in a big tank well actually one more thing is um is became a bit of a lockdown hobby but this shower tray is something that I made before the house was built it’s even made with recycled gravel and the product called Jasma

Night and every morning I wake up and have a shower it makes me very happy this is our spare bedroom one of the two spare bedrooms this again got the bamboo screening and the same as our primary Suite so this is um one of my children’s rooms the bedrooms are all relatively

Small and quite simple we did try and do some things that were kind of space saving and clever uses of space and this bunk bed is one of them so each bedroom has got a bunk bed that is on top of each other but the wall kind of does an

S shape around the bed so um one my Elder son sleeps up here and then in the next bedroom there’s another bunk bed so they have private rooms with beds but they’re kind of stacked on top of each other and then each have like a des space so it’s just all about maximizing

Space we were also aware of flexibility that maybe in the future these guys might want to make a couple of bigger bedrooms so all the partitions between bedrooms can all be relatively easily taken down to make bigger bedrooms or even make more smaller rooms which means that there’s flexibility for Tom and his Family the scope of the kind of environmental criteria here extends in a number of different ways so one of them is about how the energy is captured and used so there’s a number of solar panels on the roof that capture energy they then help power an air source heat pump and so the

Pump provides the heating for the space Heating and the hot water there’s also a battery linked to the solar panels and any excess energy that’s created from the solar panels that gets stored in the battery and is then used at a later point during the summer months the house

Is pretty much off grid in terms of its energy usage we also integrated a number of passive environmental measures into the building such as the space that we’re in now which pulls the house through opening paines at the top of the space which open when the temperature

Rises and draws the air through the house and hot air rises and exits Through the Windows this house greenhous is a rated in terms of it EPC rating and is also well below the RBA 203 climate challenge in terms of in terms of embodied carbon targets for me it was

Really exciting walking in the first time we came back after Tom and am andine and their family had moved in you obviously spend so many hours looking at models and drawings and detailing every corner of a building then you spend several months on site going to site every week watching it gradually come

Together so to then see it finally come to life people living it enjoying it it was really great to see and it was also really nice to see the kids finding new uses for the spaces that we maybe hadn’t imagined playing hide-and-seek behind the curtains running round and round the

Mezanine upstairs yeah I think it’s always that kind of coming back into a house that youve spent so long designing and delivering and then beginning to see that being used in the way in which a you thought it might have been but also B kind of other ways and kind of other

Uses and other nooks and crannies kind of that you hadn’t necessarily designed as being used in that way it’s always one of the reasons why we do what we do and that helps us kind of get out of bed in the morning to design the next Project