Catching Sun House

Catching Sun House is located in Walthamstow, North East London on a brownfield site between Victorian terraces. It was designed to be a long-term home for the practice's founder. The plot was bought at auction with an approved planning consent for two houses. The site cost was shared with close friends who have built on the other half. The brief was developed over years of thinking about how to live. Several years passed after the purchase before construction began allowing time to refine the design. The building is conceived as a series of boxes connected by glazed screens. This creates a series of spaces; some internal, some external which read as one. The articulated roof form gives ceiling height and clerestory windows allows sunlight to penetrate, especially in winter. The material palate is simple; a double skin of concrete blocks, polished concrete floor, anodised aluminium windows and coloured MDF joinery. The form of the house is generated from two key drivers; its context, and a specific brief. The particular arrangement of the surrounding terraced houses has informed the form. A gap between perpendicular neighbouring terraces to the east of the site allows sun to penetrate and flood the site in the mornings, particularly in the winter and a long expanse of neighbouring rear gardens rolls down towards a nearby park where the sun sets to the west. The gap allows a shaft of sunlight in the morning and the upper floor space has views out over the lush neighbouring gardens, sky and big sunsets. This was the starting point for the design. Pervious planning consents required the buildings to be no higher than the adjoining victorian garden boundary walls. Also the arrangement of the external spaces of the inherited design would have resulted in them being in the shade and the living spaces overheated. To maximise sunlight, sky views and improve wellbeing, a redesign was undertaken after purchase. By mirroring the height and position of a small existing two storey structure on the site, a new design was consented which achieved a first floor space and pitched roofs to the rest of the building. The occupier experience of the internal spaces was key to reduce anxiety and promote wellbeing. The light, high ceilings and relationship to lush planting are central to the design. A hatred of fossil fuels, dark, cold and drafty period houses and DIY weekends wrote the brief. After decades of DIY projects the house had to be low maintenance. There is an air source heat pump and underfloor heating. We see sustainability as more than a tick-box exercise so focused on a minimal use of materials; concrete floors, blockwork walls and timber. There is no paint, plasterboard or other finishes. Having witnessed nightmarish final account bills from Main Contractors, we decided instead to work with a series of specialist sub-contractors, fabricators and joiners building on relationships developed over the years. The house is bright and catches sunlight, it uses it's form and landscape to being joy.