A to Z of Modern Living: Cube Haus founders on their simplified way of building a new house in London
In our series profiling contemporary approaches to design, we’ve visited architects, developers and interior brands to hear how they approach their trade, from ideas around sensitive architecture and sustainable product cycles to working with colour and craftsmanship. This edition’s focus, Cube Haus, however, doesn’t fit neatly into any of those categories, being neither architect, developer nor design studio. In fact, the best description we’ve come up with for their radical new model is to have masterfully and comprehensively simplified the way of building a new house in London.
For anyone that’s ever seen a single episode of Grand Designs – which, we’d wager, is a good fair few of you – you’ll be aware of how painstaking and testing the process of building a contemporary home can be. Problems with land acquisition, planning permission, site access, dodgy builders, unforeseen costs and contractual disputes seem to plague every project from the get-go. The headaches appear even more gruelling in London, where it often seems the entire city – from its planning offices to cramped Victorian streets – is hell-bent on preventing the emergence of any contemporary architecture.
Enter Cube Haus. The service, set up by friends Philip Bueno de Mesquita and Paul Tully, both from creative backgrounds, and Nicola Kelly, who has over 30 years of construction know-how under her hard hat, is offering a win-win solution to the challenge of building a new home in London by finding hard-to-come-by infill sites, negotiating the entire planning process, overseeing the construction and delivery and ensuring build costs are kept down (and stay down). Oh, and they’ve commissioned design superstars David Adjaye, Faye Toogood, Turner.Works and Skene Catling de la Peña to come up with the portfolio of homes, all of which are beautifully considered formats for modern living.
Overcoming the challenges of building a new home in the capital is something Philip is well versed in, having commissioned the then still-emerging David Adjaye to build Lost House, an inventive project that managed to bring light and a sense of openness and nature into a former loading bay in King’s Cross. “Looking back, I wish I had the option of what we’re doing now because I really didn’t know what I was doing!” says Philip at Cube Haus’ headquarters near Arnold Circus in Shoreditch.
After selling Lost House via The Modern House, Philip set out to build another project, Cube House, in Clerkenwell. It was when Paul came to visit the completed project that the idea for a new model of building architecturally interesting houses across London first bounced between the two. “Philip and I don’t come from construction backgrounds,” says Paul, “When we were formulating Cube Haus we realised that construction is quite a tired, old industry and we wanted to come up with a fresh approach on it.”
Fast forward to today, and Cube Haus, as their idea became named, has managed to find six infill sites for new homes across London, from Stoke Newington to Forest Gate, with many more on the way. As anyone who has tried it will attest, the first, and often greatest hurdle to building a new house in London is finding a site on which to do it. The competition for good plots in decent parts of town with enough potential for a decent-sized home is, to put it mildly, intense. By securing the land and planning permission for a new house way before the client gets involved, Cube Haus greatly shortens the process of self-building, and prevents the disheartening blow of finding the perfect site, only to be gazumped by a higher bidder.
The next obstacle is the planning process, which often takes
months of negotiations and money spent on applications. Cube Haus, however,
front the costs and are accustomed to the intricacies of the process – an
unenviable skill – meaning the application process is entirely negated for
the client.
Post-planning, a conventional self-build project would then
face the actual building, which, for a lot of people, means doubling up as
client and project manager. With double responsibility comes double the amount
of work, stress and anxiety, but not for clients of Cube Haus, who leave it to
Nicola to tender to local builders, secure a fixed price for the entire build,
administer the contracts and ensure that the build ticks along at the right
pace.
“We’ll stay engaged throughout the building process, acting as the professional administrator and advisor to the client,” explains Nicola. “We’ll be protecting clients’ interests and making sure that the contractor delivers what they’re meant to. That deals with the significant risk and is a very efficient way of going about a build. We don’t add a mark-up on the land or the construction, we just add a fee for the effort we’ve brought, which is the value to the site and our professional management.” Because of the small markups, Cube Haus aims to deliver projects for 10% less than the end value of the home.
So, you’re interested in commissioning a Cube Haus – what
kind of space will you be living in? Well, for that, think open, split-level
floorplans with double-height glazed walls, sunken and courtyard gardens,
natural material palettes, generously-sized bedrooms and roof terraces, all
conceived by world-class designers. “The different designs all show the
individual imprint of their makers, but they all hang together,” says Nicola. “They
have to fit into the street be sympathetic to the neighbourhood because
otherwise we wouldn’t get planning.”
And, while there is scope to change the colour of the tiles, for example, buyers are encouraged to embrace the design laid out by Cube Haus. “What we’re selling is the total architectural concept of the designer, including the interior, but the client has the option to do whatever they want inside, obviously,” says Philip. “The brief was not to have a super expensive fit-out, because we want to keep the overall costs down, so what we’ve come up with is a very beautiful starting point from which people can start personalising their interior.”
But it’s not all surface-level design. With an emphasis on sustainability and low carbon-demanding homes, Cube Haus encourage their clients to go fully electric, including for the underfloor heating, to do away with the need for gas. What’s more is that soon, a version of a Cube Haus which runs off recycled biofuel may soon be a reality. “Charlotte is designing a scheme that has a central stove as the entire energy ‘pod’ for the house, which is fired on biofuel made from coffee grounds, which burns with 80% less carbon than if they were sent to landfill. They’re fired in masonry ovens and heat up the hot water and you can get your power off it too,” says Nicola.
If this all sounds very modern, it’s meant to be. “For me, modernity means evolving buildings and homes to suit the way we actually want to live today,” explains Nicola. “So, not being stuck to the idea of a dining room and a kitchen without any interconnection, like in Victorian buildings, which, despite being great for modern adaptation, shouldn’t be our starting point when designing homes now.
“It’s quite a challenge as you have to go beyond the four-walls formula. We have to ask: How are people going to live in this space? How are they going to feel comfortable? Are the rooms big enough? It’s really about breathing new life into the ways we respond to those questions.
“Cube Haus thinks about the ways in which people live, but
also makes sure the homes we build are relevant to every stage of one’s life. I
like to think that someone in their 80s could buy the same Cube Haus a
25-year-old could buy because it’s open, flexible living for the 21st
century.”
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