Text description provided by the architects. Two houses on a stunning headland site in Jersey UK. Jersey is a small island off the north coast of France. The site is a beautiful headland covered in native heather and gorse, it being too windy and exposed to allow trees to grow.
Our design philosophy for the 2 houses was to integrate the houses into the existing headland to minimize the impact especially when seen from above. To achieve this the houses ‘grow’ out of the sloping site with roof gardens on top. The main living room pavilions then had curved sloping roofs with photovoltaic cells integrated into the roofs.
For the main house the building tied into the sloping ground on both ends to enclose a protected south facing courtyard which contains a natural swimming pool which is filtered by reeds and plants rather than a conventional chlorine system.
The house is clad in a stone or slate which was also from the UK. The stone has an earthy feel and helps tie the buildings into the headland. The houses were designed to be eco friendly from the start with high levels of insulation, heating using air source heat pumps and photovoltaic cells with Tesla ‘powerwalls’ to provide electrical storage so the house can be off grid.
-
Architects: Guz Architects
- Area: 1425 m²
- Year: 2018
- Photographs: Patrick Bingham-Hall
Author: Hana Abdel
This article was first published in Arch Daily and is republished with permission.
