Artistʼs House and Studio

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Artistʼs House and Studio

Firm

Langlands & Bell

Type

Residential › Private House
Cultural › Gallery

As artists who have spent over 30 years working together and exploring through our art the complex role that architecture plays in all of our lives, we have always wanted to design and build a building for our own use from scratch.A few years ago we found a suitable site for such a building by accident in a remote rural location in Kent. Despite being only fifty miles from the City of London the site is “off grid” with no direct connections for electricity or mains water.Our ideas for the design of the building flowed from the rural location of the site, the local topography of rolling agricultural land and oak woodland, certain aspects of the local architectural vernacular, and our own needs as artists for a suitable space for the making and display of our work.After developing our ideas for the design we approached the engineers Atelier One for advice and architectural and engineering services to prepare the drawings, obtain planning permission, and help obtain tenders for the building packages.As we were intending to manage construction of the new building ourselves while also continuing with our day-to-day work as artists we decided early on that the best way of proceeding might be to use a prefabricated building system for the main structure. For this reason, and also for reasons of environmental sustainability we decided to use a prefabricated cross laminated structural timber panel system supplied in the UK by Eurban. Once the pile foundations were in place this allowed the buildingʼs main structure to be delivered and erected in less than two weeks. The other main elements of the building, the curtain wall glazing, wood fibre insulation, and the external cladding of untreated oak boards followed.Due to it being “off grid” the building has to generate itʼs own energy. This is achieved with a combined heat and power (CHP) system consisting of roof mounted photo voltaic and solar thermal arrays connected to a thermal store (of hot water) and a bank of batteries. For periods when there is no sun an LPG fueled electricity generator fitted with a heat exchanger recharges the batteries and the thermal store simultaneously. This is possible because producing 1 kw of electricity for the batteries also produces 1 kw of heat, (as a by-product captured by the heat exchanger) for the thermal store to supply the domestic hot water, and under-floor heating. There is also a domestic LPG boiler as back-up for periods of sustained cold weather but despite two unusually cold winters in a row it has barely been used. Finally the building also utilizes a wood burning stove, and a rainwater harvesting system..