ORCHARD HOUSE

Campion Design began designing Orchard House with the vision to create beautiful, sustainable, and affordable architecture. At the time their director, Will Campion, was only 22, but they have finished constructing this smart home; proving you do not need to choose between sacrificing the budget or the environment. Orchard house was about developing a new Lincolnshire typology, that envisioned a sustainable future for the rural agrarian communities. The traditional agraiin architecture that’s quitiessential to Lincolnshire, inspired the gable design and striped textured reminiscent of the nearby barns and neighbouring St Michael’s Church and it’s standing seam leadwork.

For my third, constructed house, I aimed for zero-carbon, self-sufficiency, equipping it with a rainwater harvester, solar panels, an air-source heat pump and heat-recovery ventilation. This was still all for just £1000/sqm, in addition to hundreds of pounds worth of savings per year in utility bills; here we made eco-friendliness synergistic with cost efficiency. The house utilised SIPs panels filled full of insulation made from Rapeseed oil, making sure the house was used from the most low-embodied energy materials. The larch board and batten cladding was invented by Campion Design to tie together the reclaimed bricks and the timber to reimagine the corrugated steel of a traditional Lincolnshire barn.

It'll be these aggregates of marginal gains that can help restore our symbiotic relationship with the planet; now more prevalent than ever. Recent events have made me realise how dependant we are on global systems, and how vulnerable we are to disruption through no fault of our own. Saving the world does not have to cost the Earth. Self-sufficient design will help to empower our physical and mental health, remove utility costs and slow climate change. Orchard House is just the first step in achieving this eudaimonic utopia.