The design creates two gardens separated by the kitchen and living space. A further family space and bedroom on the ground floor are supplemented with two bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor, along with a loft space and bedroom on the second floor.

To avoid damaging the tree roots steel screw piles are carefully placed instead of concrete foundations. The ground floor features exposed brickwork, a concrete frame with joinery subdividing the spaces, and concrete beams that allow wide openings to the gardens. Upstairs, internal masonry is replaced with a timber frame, avoiding the use of structural steel. Externally, there is a brickwork outer leaf and concrete beams, with the timber eaves clad in cement board.

The house is fully electric, with an air-source heat pump for heating and hot water, triple-glazing, underfloor heating, and passive stack ventilation. It achieves an actual performance of 1.78 tonnes of CO2 per year compared to 6 tonnes for an average house. The low-maintenance west-facing rainwater garden provides evening light for the kitchen, living room and bedroom, while the south-facing terrace, accessible from the kitchen, is a drought-resistant garden. Rainwater is channelled into water butts with runoff managed on-site. Photo credit Nick Dearden. 31/44 Architects

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