Lean, Green Sliver of a House by Luke Tozer
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 02.22.08
TreeHugger loves skinny houses; they don't take up much space and they really demonstrate the talents of the designers. Luke Tozer of Pitman Tozer Architects experiments on himself with only eight feet to work with, widening out in the rear. To top it off, as Building Design writes:
"But that’s not enough: the house had to have as low a carbon footprint as feasible. But setting yourself hard tasks has never provided an excuse for failure: you have to make it all work, and Tozer has come out of it all with a beautifully planned and built house — a tour de force of the architect’s skills."
So it has 150 foot boreholes for heat pumps, pumping into space insulated with lambswool. Under the garden is a rainwater storage tank which supplies the toilets. Neighbours are fighting proposed rooftop photovoltaics.
Tozer was not familiar with such technologies and was probably wise to try these things out before inflicting them on clients; I wish all architects could do this. Building Design suggests that the new technologies may lead to a new aesthetic:
"If this is a tendency towards a new brand of functionalism, it is one which as yet lacks a formal language of expression. Who knows if one will be developed? When the beauty is in the pipework, you bring the pipes to the fore, and when the beauty is organisational, you make external and internal volumes correspond. When the beauty is efficiency, things are harder to express and tend towards the evanescent: the frost on a well insulated roof lasts well after its profligate neighbours’ roofs are wet with meltwater — the fact is always there, its expression is fleeting but it is on the very borders of intention and artifice." ::BDOnline
Pictures by Nick Kane
But... it's not really a skinny house, is it? It opens up into a relatively normal-sized house [just with space allotted for a private courtyard], it seems to just have a skinny entryway...
I LOVE how the back area opens completely to the outdoors. Fresh air does wonders for detoxing the home, so it's a great personal health measure.
The floor plan image used may not have been the best one to illustrate the skinny-ness of this house. i followed the link to the site and it offers floor plans for all four floors. this one:
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story_attachment.asp?storycode=3106739&seq=11&type=G&c=1
is probably best at really showing that the majority of this house really is that skinny.
:D
Not to be Debbie Downer, but this is hardly a skinny house. One narrow wing does not a skinny house make. The low carbon footprint and open layouts are both admirable, but, if you really think about it, this house is a bit excessive and wasteful when it comes to space... just look at that empty, useless space in the patio/living room area.
Not to be Debbie Downer, but this is hardly a skinny house. One narrow wing does not a skinny house make. The low carbon footprint and open layouts are both admirable, but, if you really think about it, this house is a bit excessive and wasteful when it comes to space... just look at that empty, useless space in the patio/living room area.
there's nothing 'eco' or 'green' about this project. there is plenty of roof area, none of which is angled to respond to sunlight, & from the angle of the photo, one can assume a zero-level surface, which probably doesn't drain water as efficiently. the furniture is your garden variety aluminum/steel/glass/exotic wood combination, all of which contain enough embodied energy to power 6 of these house types.
and it is not skinny at all. come to think of it, without the use of an architectural scale, the footprint suggests a square footage of at least 2000, counting the upper levels. some japanese designers who receive no merit can squeeze a decently laid house out of 500, with an honest statement of its carbon footprint.
although the entrance is misleadingly playful.
To Debbie Downer, give me a brake...this is the problem with great design, someone always has to find something wrong no matter how small. Enjoy it for what has been achieved.
This MUST be in London - nowhere else are there so many NIMBYs (Not in my back yard!) to complain about this guy using pvs on his roof while they park their Rangerovers outside is really rich!
i like it. it shows what you can do with a odd space. even if parts of it are unconventional.