Gallery
Water Farm was designed to nurture the needs of a young family of five, moving away from the city, with strong ties to the site and a desire for off-grid living. The result is an exciting, yet hyper-functional, five-bedroom off-grid home.
The bold geometric timber-clad roof is the home’s defining feature. Born out of an early study into local timber frame buildings, it soon became its own entity, a powerful form that strikingly contrasts its natural surroundings.
The clients approached Studio Bark with a dream for a ‘home for life’ on the family farm – rooted in decades of family history. At that time, they were living in Essex with their three children and seeking the quality of life that rural Suffolk could offer whilst still being a reasonable train journey to London.
Located on the edge of Dedham Vale AONB, this Suffolk site features mature woodland and pasture with a westward slope and a central crest. The landscape is characterised by trees, hedgerows and two distinctive field oaks, offering picturesque views and glimpses of the Stour Valley through clearings.
Designed to be both seen and enjoyed, the proposal takes advantage of the nearby public right of way, allowing the passersby to appreciate it as an architectural statement that enhances the scenic quality of the area.
Construction, design and landscape features
The delivery of Water Farm followed a slightly unconventional procurement route compared to other projects usually undertaken by Studio Bark. As a Director of a bespoke lighting company, the client had experience coordinating large, complex projects, which fuelled their desire to deliver their dream family home. This resulted in Water Farm being led by the client working directly with the contractor as a design-and-build scheme.
Fabric first
As with all of Studio Bark’s projects, Water Farm began with a fabric-first approach to the design with the aim of achieving a very high-performing building envelope utilising as many natural materials as possible in order to drive down both embodied and operational carbon. The use of natural materials also ensures that the building fabric remains breathable, aiding in its longevity but also taking into consideration that at the end of the building’s life, these materials can be easily recycled or suitably disposed of without causing further harm to the environment.
Construction
The ground floor of the building is arranged around the central courtyard or ‘lightwell’, offering visual connections between the various internal and external spaces while keeping the plan narrow enough to allow for excellent natural light and ventilation. Thresholds in the circulation around the central courtyard were created by incorporating single or double steps, which was also a response to the natural topography of the site. With these features in mind, the foundations needed to be carefully designed to maintain a continuous insulated layer, resulting in a fully insulated raft foundation. To add another layer of complexity, the design also looked to bring the external levels on some parts of the building to window cill height, bedding the home into the landscape whilst also creating a unique relationship between the internal spaces and surrounding meadow.
The proposed primary structure aimed to use timber throughout. Working closely with the structural engineer, Structure Workshop, the complex, geometric form utilised glulam timbers to deal with the longer, load-bearing spans as well as the upper-floor cantilevers. On the two-storey part of the building, each truss is unique to accommodate the varying geometry of the roof structure. The single-storey part of the building used larger spanning timbers to create a vaulted roof in both the dining room and the kitchen.
Designing out cold bridging is the basis of high-performing building envelopes, and Water Farm was no exception to this. By filling the timber frame with flexible wood fibre insulation and adding an additional layer of rigid wood fibre insulation on the outside, all cold bridging was eliminated. Where wood fibre insulation was not suitable, PIR insulation was specified, but this was kept to an absolute minimum. The notable benefit of using wood fibre over PIR, other than the obvious environmental ones, is that wood fibre and other natural insulating materials create a more effective thermal buffer, especially when considering a warming climate creates a more climate-resilient home.
External material palette
As a practice, Studio Bark is constantly searching for unique, low-carbon materials and often finds itself forging relationships with material suppliers who have yet to release their products into the open market. With Water Farm, a key visual feature linking back to the locally-built character was the plinth. In wanting to minimise the use of concrete wherever possible, Studio Bark found a carbon-negative block developed by Lignacite, appropriately named the Carbon Buster that absorbs more CO2 than is released during its manufacture. These give the building a robust contemporary plinth contrasting the western red cedar timber cladding.
The timber cladding was specified as UK-sourced western red cedar, chosen for its durability and silver aesthetic when naturally weathered. Detailed correctly, timber cladding – even on the more exposed roof plane – can withstand decades of seasonal changes.
From a distance, the silvered timber cladding creates a striking, monolithic form. When closer, the subtleties of the details become more apparent. A change in scale between the cladding width on the ground floor compared to the upper floors creates a distinction between the two parts of the building, again adding more visual weight to the ground floor and a more delicate, crafted finish to the bold, geometric roof.
Responding to the sensitive context
Further design considerations were required because the site bounds Dedham Vale Natural Landscape (formally Dedham Vale AONB). Discussions with the local AONB officer allowed the design team to develop an appropriate response ensuring the proposal preserved and respected the sensitivity of the surrounding context. This was achieved by ensuring the windows looking out to the natural landscape were kept to a minimum. This, in turn, informed the internal layout of the home. For those windows that faced the natural landscape, fixed external louvres were incorporated to help significantly reduce evening light spills. Other windows incorporate automated shutters that retract into the cladding zone, so during the day, natural light and ventilation fill the bedroom, and they are closed at night again to prevent excessive light spills.
Landscape enhancement
Although simple, the landscape strategy plays a key role in enhancing the existing site and bedding the home into its surroundings. Meeting the building’s edge, the surrounding meadow softens the transition from landscape to building, creating a direct connection with the surrounding scenery when circulating through the building. Simple pole fencing separates other areas of the site, in keeping with the adjacent farm aesthetic and allowing the family’s horses to be seen from the house and to wander in close proximity to the building.
Water Farm is an example of a hugely ambitious true self-build project. The result is testament to the quality and commitment of the contractor, M Chisnall and Sons, and the client, who wanted to manage their own self-build project. The reward for the client is a home that meets the needs of a large family living in a rural location and one that they are all deeply connected with.
Layout
Water Farm is a five-bedroom, two-storey home with a GIA of approximately 350m2 and a separate garage/office.
The client wanted spaces to be connected and to feel open whilst maintaining some separation from one another. The solution was a stepped ground floor arranged around a central courtyard. The courtyard provides cross ventilation and lots of natural light and also creates a layering of views through the house and to the landscape beyond.
Where the ground floor is expressed and zoned through the stepped ground-floor slab, the first-floor rooms are characterised by the striking geometry of the roof, which gives each room a unique spatial character. The gable ends offer the two main bedrooms expansive views across the natural surroundings.
Environmental design
The building has been developed based on first principles of good environmental design, aiming to be a low-tech, but high-performance house.
Solar control
Careful positioning of glazing, either with overhangs or movable external shutters, provides control of solar gain in the summer.
Passive ventilation and natural daylight
The central courtyard provides an incredible well of light and fresh air, which – twinned with high ceilings and openable windows in every aspect – provides excellent daylight and natural ventilation throughout the plan.
Lightweight versus heavyweight materials
The building sits on a heavyweight plinth with heavyweight floors, increasing thermal mass potential and thermal control, whereas the lightweight timber frame above is hyper-insulated to reduce heat loss.
Embodied carbon and local materials
Natural materials have been specified throughout, many of which have been sourced locally.
Off-grid systems
A large solar array (located on the studio roof) is twinned with high-capacity batteries and a ground-source heat pump, providing much of the building’s heating and energy demand for three seasons. This is backed up by a Midas Biofuel Generator for the cloudy winter months. A borehole with a filtration system provides off-grid drinking water and a high-performance Klargester Biodisc deals with the wastewater.
Planning
Water Farm was granted permission under Paragraph 79 (now Paragraph 84) of the National Planning Policy Framework, a policy that requires exceptional design quality for new homes in the open countryside.
This project was a rewarding collaboration involving specialists from Rural Solutions (planning), Torc Ecology (environmental), Structure Workshop (engineering), Terra Firma (landscape), Create Consulting (highways) and Greenlight (arboricultural). The proposal underwent a rigorous design process, including two design review panel presentations.
The multidisciplinary team ensured the design responded sensitively to the rural context, aiming to create an architecturally-significant structure. This project exemplifies how contemporary, sustainable architecture can enhance and integrate with its natural landscape.
