3 December 2021 By Fran Williams. Photography by Heiko Prigge
Macdonald Wright has completed an infill home in Hackney that cuts its energy requirements for heating to a 10th of current UK building standards
The £340,000 Library House is a low-energy home next to Edwin Cooper's Grade II-listed Clapton Library in Hackney. Macdonald Wright acted as both client and architect on the project.
The home uses glazed white clay brick with weathered Cor-ten steel, while its Northwold Road-facing facade has been designed to reference the proportion and colours of its neighbours with its coping level and windows mirroring the proportions of adjacent cottages.
The vertical Cor-ten steel plane acts as a formal separation between the red brick library and white cottages.
The window heads to the front elevation have been constructed out of a lime-scraped tile slip detail, referencing similar detailing of the adjacent library arches and inspired by southern English vernacular architecture and the Arts and Crafts movement.
The building envelope retains heat through significant insulation thicknesses, triple-glazed windows and rooflights and very low air permeability.
It also features 10 PV panels and a compact MVHR unit – all contributing to bringing the energy requirements for heating down to 750W over winter – a 10th of the requirements for a new-build house set under current building standards.
The house is certified to the AECB Building Standard (Association for Environment Conscious Building, based on the Passivhaus Standard).
While to be commercially viable, new homes need to generate profit through sale or rental, society is quite rightly demanding that future development must prioritise affordability and sustainability while maintaining quality of design. James Macdonald Wright, practice founder, Macdonald Wright
Start on site July 2019 Completion date August 2020 Gross internal floor area 84m² Gross (internal + external) floor area 107.5m² Form of contract or procurement route Traditional – JCT Minor Works Construction cost £340,000 Construction cost per m2 £3,163 Architect Macdonald Wright Architects Client James Macdonald Wright Structural engineer Osbourne Edwards Quantity surveyor GQS Services Sustainability consultant Conker Conservation Principal designer Macdonald Wright Architects Approved building inspector Butler and Young Main contractor DanEco Build CAD software used Vectorworks, SketchUp
Percentage of floor area with daylight factor >2% 100% Percentage of floor area with daylight factor >5% 35% On-site energy generation 35% Annual mains water consumption 35m3/occupant Airtightness at 50Pa 1.3 m3/h.m2 Heating and hot water load 17 kWh/m2/yr Overall area-weighted U-value Not supplied Design life 125 years Embodied / whole-life carbon 372 kgCO2eq/m2 Annual CO2 emissions 10.8 kgCO2eq/m2
NB purchased electricity is from 100% renewable sources only so annual emissions are zero
Tags Clapton Cor-ten home extensions Macdonald Wright residential
You might also be interested in…
London-based practice Studio Seilern Architects has designed a Modernist private villa on…
Iain Jackson revisits L1, completed in 2008 to a masterplan by BDP…
Part of the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital redevelopment in Liverpool, the centre…
40 under 40 practice McCloy + Muchemwa has transformed a dilapidated outbuilding…
Sign in or Register a new account to join the discussion.