123DV has recently designed the zero emission residential project.

Ecological concept

Generating its own energy

The aim of the ecological concept is to achieve a zero emission house which can generate its own energy needs:

• It generates its own electricity from sun energy by the use of solar panels
• It collects earth heat or cold from the ground and stores it in the ground for additional heating or cooling
• It collects its own water with an own dug underground well
• It collects rainwater and reuses it for flushing the toilets

Reducing energy needs

In order to reduce the required energy for heating or cooling we propose a house which makes more use of the thermal earth warmth. An underground house can make use of the constant earth temperature of 15 degrees Celsius and therefore need less energy for heating or cooling to reach the required interior temperature of around 19 degrees Celsius.

A house above the ground can absorb the extra warmth or cold in summer or cold in winter. A combination of both principles could lead to a more energy saving house. The extra warmth or cold can be mixed with air of the underground house to achieve the required temperature.

A combination of an "underground-" and "above the ground" house would lead to a section where you have underground rooms (more dark and cool) and above the ground rooms (more light, different temperature).

How can sustainability trigger architecture and life?

An eco house contributes to the environment. Does it also contribute to the quality of the daily life?

Back to basic: experiences of nature

As a child it was a great experience going up and down the slide. As adults we are conditioned to go up and down the stairs. Where is the joy of moving?

As a child it was a great experience to build underground shacks. There we would sit tight to each other, in contact with the earth, in the dark, in our own world, safe from the outside.

Why as grown up people do we want bigger spaces and let technique give us protection, such as alarm systems.

For children, playing in the rain could be an exciting thing. For adults we usually don’t like getting wet in the rain, but we do enjoy rain showers.

Maybe designing elements with more joy can bring more quality of the daily life.

Designing experiences

Daily life cycle

The spaces described in the "underground-" and "above the ground" house match perfectly with the daily life cycle.

The more darker and sheltered spaces for sleeping can be located in the "underground" house: dark and sheltered from the outside world.

The more light area for living can be located in the "above the ground" house: more in contact with light and surroundings.

The design consist of four stories ranging from dark to light.

Bedstead

Reintroducing the bedstead in the "underground" house could strengthen the experience of intimate space in the dark, protected from the outside world.

The glide

The four stories in the eco "underground-" and "above the ground" house are connected by a set of stairs.

By introducing also a glide, travelling down to the underground house could be more an experience. It also is a time saving element were traveling might become a joyful experience.

Rain shower

An open gap in the roof could function as a rain shower when it rains, where the strength of water flows depend on nature. Going to the shower could be an adventure where you can get cleansed by natural rain.

Toilet lounge

Visiting the toilet is mostly an individual boring ritual. By clustering more toilets to meet each other in the toilet could lead to a social event and maybe more quality time.

Design of the eco house

This eco house is a design which contributes to the environment. The design generates its own energy.

This home also requires less energy for heating or cooling compared to a traditional house.

The design is also a speculation to give a different view of a living environment to bring back more basic experiences with nature. It is also an attempt to introduce opportunities for new social interactions, in order to gain more quality in daily life.

ECO from a different angle…

In a time when words like sustainable, ecological and green are almost an obligation, they are often only used as a label. That is why one of our latest 123DV projects proved to be challenging, but also very exciting: we were asked to design an ECO House. Thanks to our friends from Mode:Lina we were involved in a Polish design competition. The assignment was clear and simple: design a house for a standard family, on a standard location, but with a highly sustainable performance.

We had faced this topic before in previous projects, but it had not yet been used as the core of the design. For this competition we were asked to be bold, to push to the boundaries of sustainability. It took us several brainstorm sessions to find the right strategy, but at the end we all agreed on one thing: our answer to the question should be architectural. Since we are not engineers, biologists or scientists, we had to look at it from an architectural point of view: does the house contribute to the quality of daily life?

As architects, we deal with space, organization, shapes, light, materials… So we took a basic shape (rectangle), used an age-old natural and ecological recourse (geothermal heat) and combined the two. The house is a rectangle of 28 by 9 by 4.3 meters that for two thirds has been plugged into the ground under an angle of 21 degrees! With one gesture, we created both a strong visual statement and a high performance energy standard. Simple, strong and efficient, but not without consequence. We also had to deal with the psychological impact of living in a sloped house, underneath the ground and with little natural light. The task wasn't easy, but in the end we managed to transform the problems into opportunities and create a unique and special ECO house.

+ All images and drawings courtesy 123DV architecture

Coach House, the new 6,000 sq ft restaurant and café designed by SHH at one Britain's most historic sites – Hatfield House – has just scooped the 'Best Café or Fast Food Award' at the UK's prestigious Restaurant & Bar Design Awards 2012 ('the world’s only concept of its kind dedicated exclusively to hospitality design'). SHH was also a double-winner at the awards in 2011 for Barbican Foodhall and Barbican Lounge, with all three projects created for the same client – Levy Restaurants (part of Compass Group UK & Ireland).

Background to Project

An existing tea-room for visitors to Hatfield House was already operating on the estate, with profits contributing to the ongoing costs of maintaining the historic property. Its simple format, however, was no longer equal to the demands being placed on it by the high volume of visitors. A new design was commissioned to enlarge the café and restaurant space and this coincided with a major master plan for the house and grounds, initiated by Lord Salisbury and undertaken by Brooks Murray Architects. The master plan was aimed at expanding alternative revenue sources, as well as improving year-round access to the grounds for visitors. The restaurant, housed in a former 19th century coach house, was to be joined by new retail facilities in the surrounding former stable buildings.

Brief

The brief to SHH from operators Levy Restaurants and the Hatfield House estate was to create a facility with day-long and year-round appeal, which would provide a quality food service offer for visitors to the new attractions in the grounds; tenants of the office space in the adjacent buildings; visitors to the main house in season and destination visitors from the surrounding area, where good eateries were in relatively short supply.

This was a large logistical project carried out on a short time frame. The service aspect was particularly demanding in terms of the budget, with new air source heat pumps, all new electrical services and hot water boilers required, which necessitated an upgrading of the electrical sub-station.

SHH Associate and Project Leader Brendan Heath

Design Concept and Detail

SHH worked very closely with Levy Restaurants' in-house Innovations Team on the development on the design concept for the Coach House project. The guiding design principle was for the restaurant to look at home in its nineteenth century setting, whilst at the same time being undeniably contemporary. The key to achieving this was selecting materials that made direct reference to those used in the surrounding buildings; using them in an almost hand-crafted manner and applying them to very simple forms.

As we were designing a space within a former working building, we felt that anything too pristine would be out of place, so the materials are used in a very honest way.

Brendan Heath

The restaurant has been expanded to include two floors and now provides 70% more floor space than the original tea room. Kitchens, food service counters and seating are situated in an L-shaped ground floor area, with a direct connection to the outdoors through a new glass extension, created as part of the overall architectural works. The first floor provides additional seating, accessed via a new spiral staircase within in a generous void and before opening out onto a roof terrace with views south towards the main house.

Operationally, the new offer is designed around three distinct service points: The Bakery, The Deli and The Chef's Table, providing flexible usage and hours of operation.

The materials we used for the counters of the three offers combine tiled fronts, solid oak framed tables and zinc counter tops, with a slightly different configuration for each. The zinc counter tops were acid-treated to give them a well-worn look.

Brendan Heath

The Bakery, open from first thing in the morning, offers breads, cakes and pastries with the ovens placed on full display to entice customers with the smell of fresh baking. Also serving tea and coffee, this counter operates continuously throughout the entire day.

The Deli and The Chef's Table begin operating from late morning and primarily serve lunchtime customers. The Deli counter offers salads and sandwiches, with The Chef's Table serving hot food direct from the kitchen – now visible through the new, full-height opening formed in the rear structural wall. The high visibility of the kitchen, with its central cooking island, underlines the emphasis on fresh food, made to order.

Customers are served so much more quickly and effectively now, which has improved the guest experience. From the display of food to reducing queues, the whole space flows and works very well for both staff and customers. The Chef's Table is a real focus point and the theatre created for customers being able to see the chef cooking and serving the food has provoked many wonderful reactions.  Customers love to be able to see that all our food is cooked, prepared and baked in house.

Helen Craddock, Concessions Manager at Hatfield House

Revealing texture was also an important part of the design. Next to 'The Deli' counter, the render was removed from one of the building's original walls in order to expose the red brick behind, in the process revealing holes, timber in-fills and iron nails from previous building work. This sits alongside black-stained rough timber boards used as cladding for the full height back bar joinery, a direct reference to the material used on the outside of the building. All of this sits on a new tiled green slate floor.

The new all-glass extension opening onto the outdoor courtyard uses solid oak flooring as a means of emphasising its separateness from the original building.

The first floor, with its exposed black steel roof trusses, continues this use of oak flooring, with the connecting staircase taking the form of a new black-painted, cast aluminium spiral stair supplied and installed by Albion Designs.

For the furniture and lighting, we took the approach that the context could not be more British, so we made a conscious decision to specify products by British designers – or designs with a strong British connection – wherever possible, as it was such a great place to showcase their work. This includes tables and chairs from local manufacturer Ercol; Tom Dixon's Offcut stools in untreated oak; and Audrey bar stools from Naughtone.

We mixed natural and black-stained oak furniture throughout. The building's exterior uses lots of black timber, so that also became our starting reference for the choice of material. We also didn't want natural oak sitting on natural oak, so we chose to use natural oak furniture against the slate floor and black-stained oak in areas with natural oak floors.

Brendan Heath

Bespoke oak bench tables have been installed adjacent to the food service counters, with two further bespoke communal eating tables in the adjacent overspill seating space. The latter integrate display shelving in welded mild steel.

We deliberately left the weld marks visible, to continue the language of honest material use.

Brendan Heath

Book-ending the tables, and working in conjunction with the three dramatic Fontana Arte Chandeliers designed by David Chipperfield, the shelves help to create a greater sense of intimacy in this area. Additional shelves behind The Bakery and The Deli counters utilise the same methods of display and material detailing, creating continuity between the spaces.

The only elements without a British connection are the hand-blown, coloured glass pendant lights used as a feature in The Bakery area. These are from Niche Modern in the USA, from whose extensive range SHH chose seven shades, suspended at different heights, to create a striking focal point.

This was simply the best product for the space, and so we made an exception for it.

Brendan Heath

The honest material language also carried through into graphic communication. Wood was salvaged from trees felled by the estate's foresters during winter grounds' maintenance, with the stumps then used as support plinths for external hanging signs, and dressed wooden blocks for internal signage and menus. For these, SHH devised a system of metal crooks of various heights to be inset into the timbers. The estate's onsite blacksmiths undertook their production, with the final choice of ornamentation up to the smithy who made them. In this way, no two loops and twists in the crooks are the same.

We drew up a simple sketch and handed it over, and everyone was delighted with the finished result.

Brendan Heath

As a final element, the washrooms were also given their own distinctive treatment.

The new bathrooms were fairly small so there was limited opportunity to make an impact. As wall space was the most abundant surface, we took traditional Victorian floor tiles, flipped them and applied them to the wall behind the basins giving an effect not unlike a tapestry. Toilets in a restaurant environment should always be given the equivalent amount of consideration as the front of house areas. Anything less would jar with the overall experience.

Brendan Heath

The refurbishment has changed the dynamic of the restaurant and has made it a brand new and exciting place to work. Our staff are so proud to work in an award-winning restaurant and it shows in their commitment and attitude. Customer response has been fantastic – often the first word you hear them say is 'wow'! Compliments come in constantly, not only on the food and the service, but the design and the feel of the restaurant too. Turnover has increased by over 20% compared to last season.

Helen Craddock

These awards underline our commitment to design across the Levy Restaurants estate. To be acknowledged by judges of such high standing proves that we are working with the best design partners in the sector and that we are clearly understanding and responding to the changing face of our guests' needs.

Roy Westwood, Head of Innovation at Levy Restaurants

+ About Hatfield House

Hatfield House, one of the ten 'treasure houses of England', was the childhood home of Queen Elizabeth I. The magnificent Jacobean mansion was built in 1611 by Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury and son of Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I's Chief Minister. The older building on the site (The Old Palace) and the deer park surrounding the house belonged to Henry VIII, who used the palace as a home for his children: Mary, Elizabeth and Edward. It was whilst living at the Old Palace in 1558 that Elizabeth learnt of her accession to the throne. Today the Hatfield House estate is still owned by descendants of the same family – the 7th Marquess and Marchioness of Salisbury – and is often used as a movie setting for films including Orlando, Tomb Raider and the King's Speech.

+ About SHH

SHH is an architects' practice and interiors consultancy, formed in 1992 by its  three principals: Chairman David Spence, Managing Director Graham Harris and Creative Director Neil Hogan.  With a highly international workforce and portfolio, the company initially made its name in ultra-high-end residential schemes, before extending its expertise to include leisure, workspace and retail.  SHH's work has appeared in leading design and lifestyle publications all over the world, including VOGUE and ELLE Decoration in the UK, Artravel and AMC in France, Frame in Holland, Monitor in Russia, DHD in Italy, ELLE Decoration in India, Habitat in South Africa, Contemporary Home Design in Australia, Interior Design in the USA and Architectural Digest in both France and Russia, with over 110 projects also published in 70 leading book titles worldwide plus more than 75 architectural and design award wins and nominations to its name.? www.shh.co.uk

Photo Credit: Alastair Lever

+ All images courtesy SHH | photo by Alastair Lever