New Zeeland practice RTA Studio has won the Future Projects Houses category of the World Architecture Festival 2012 with their C3 House. The house was designed for an area of outstanding natural beauty that is highly valued and therefore protected. Development is carefully controlled.
The building sits in a natural hallow and nothing protrudes above 4.5m in height. It uses local materials that visually recede in to the natural landscape. The house is also designed to require minimal disturbance of the landscape and its vegetation. It is a masterful piece of understatement.
The project, achieves a triple carbon-zero status: zero carbon emissions from its operational energy use; zero carbon emissions from its total material manufacture and zero waste to the environment at the end of its lifecycle.
The house is predominantly constructed of gabion baskets filled with local stone, local renewable timber and rammed earth, and although it uses limited steel and glass, still has a negative carbon embodiment.
