Eco architects in the UK to help with your sustainable home design
This month, we’re taking a look at how ideas around sustainability, energy efficiency and thoughtful consumption are playing out in the home. Read our report on the matter here for an in-depth analysis, then browse these eco architects in the UK from our Directory, for ultra-low energy home inspiration.
To see more practices building to sustainable standards, head to our Directory and click ‘Design’, where you can filter Passivhaus and eco architects in the UK, or check out the many other categories if you’ve got something else in mind.
SOUP Architects
“In every part of the process we need to consider the environmental, social and economic sustainability of the built environment we are designing,” reads the ‘Sustainable solutions’ point of SOUP Architects’ approach. “From passive cooling techniques to managing the impact of site activity, a sustainable approach is a key element to our thinking.”
That consideration plays out across their projects, from ‘K House’, a Channel Island new build with all the latest eco tech to ‘Broombank’, a contemporary home on the banks of the River Alde in Suffolk with solar water panels on the roof supplying hot water year round. One of the best eco architects in the UK for our money.
Mclean Quinlan
London and Winchester-based Mclean Quinlan produce some of the best-looking homes on our Directory, with thoughtful attention to context, detail and the requirements of modern living. Their sustainability-focused projects are no different, producing homes that don’t look like they’ve landed from another planet.
One such example is ‘Padstow House’, a new-build project taking up a secluded plot on the banks of the Camel Estuary in Cornwall, within a former quarry. That past was elegantly referenced through the use of local stone, which grounds the building in its former industrial context, creating a sense of it having been there for decades.
Eco creds inside include a ground source heat pump, solar panels, triple glazing and super-insulated walls.
Facit Homes
One of our favourite eco architects in the UK, east London-based Facit Homes’ innovative design process is one in which the imperfect methods of on-site measuring are replaced by digital fabrication and off-site construction. The eco benefit of such a model is that their homes are millimetre perfect, allowing the buildings to be extremely insulated and airtight, with “south-facing windows that capture a free and almost everlasting energy source; the sun.”
Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery (MVHR) units, smart thermostats and triple glazing are taken as read, while air source heat pumps and solar panels are additional add-ons.
Brown + Brown Architects
Underlying Brown + Brown’s approach is a context-specific, client-led focus, that does away with pre-prescribed ideas about how a project should be designed. The resulting homes always manage to look perfectly at home in their (often rural) landscapes, a quality Strathdon House in the Cairngorms National Park illustrates well.
Being a simple design of a mono pitch roof, stacked stone wall and south-facing glazing, the house is every bit the modern cabin its remote setting calls for, and can more than handle the demands of the Scottish winter thanks to details like an MVHR unit. Remarkably, its energy-preserving specifications mean it doesn’t need central heating.
John Pardey Architects
John Pardey Architects is a studio that truly excels in the one-off housing model, having picked up numerous awards, including six national RIBA ones, for their ability to synthesise clients’ needs, far-ranging design references and their own brand of Modernism into superlative homes.
Last year, we sold one such house, Cheeran House, a lauded family home in Berkshire overlooking the Thames Valley and with far-reaching views across the Chiltern Hills. We were impressed by the quality of design, which extends not only to aspects like material, spatial layout and natural light, but also to the various emission-reducing features that mean the house produces and exports more energy than it needs to run.
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