British Pavillion: Maccreanor Lavington
The exhibition Home/Away presents the work of five British Architects who are building housing both in their own country and continental Europe. Here you can see more about the projects of Maccreanor Lavington.
Accordia housing, Cambridge
The houses in Accordia form part of a wider master plan for a new residential community at the edge of Cambridge city centre. These large family dwellings exploit long, narrow plots to create a variety of internal spaces, which relate to a series of external courtyards and patios throughout the height of the building. Larger spaces for play are provided by the common areas of open landscape and the small wooded enclaves that define the master plan.
The terrace form and mews house typology strongly resonates with Cambridge´s traditional streets and lanes, creating a house with two different faces, as opposed to a front and back. The mews has been designed to enhance to a work space and first-floor timber decks. This allows the facade to the tree lined avenue to be more open, a veranda provides the transition from ?street’ to house, with stable doors leading out from the kitchen to encourage occupation of this front space. Both faces of the house address the richness that can be created through subtle variation within a basic structure of repetition.
Langerak II, Utrecht, the Netherlands
Langerak II is the second phase of a large city extension plan of more than 30,000 new dwellings at the edge of the city of Utrecht. The project occupies two building fields with a total of 140 dwellings. This region of the Netherlands is typified by small villages and farms formed by cluster of buildings; where roof forms dominate simple brick envelopes. This vernacular became a reference point for the project, whereby houses and their associated out buildings (garages and stores) are arranged in short terraces around semi-private yards. These small cluster of dwellings lead onto an informal shared garden, fulfilling the desire for a suburban ideal at a rural scale.
In order to meet the client’s low-energy objectives, all the dwellings have south facing gardens and the orientation of the buildings maximises solar gains. The drainage from hard surfaces has been minimised through the introduction of a wadi-system, which reduces the rate of water run-off.