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A mild bunch of London architects are outfitting townhouses for the discreetly Green-minded. (Don’t tell anyone.)

By LAURA SEVIER

Photography EMMA HARDY

Installing solar panels on your roof or a wind turbine in your back garden is all well and good if you want to shout to the neighborhood, “Look at me – I’m Green!” But maybe you’re someone who doesn’t like speaking with your neighbors, much less shouting at them, and maybe those technologies aren’t worth the investment in the first place. It’s one thing to

talk about a solar-powered villa in sunny Spain or a wind-powered fisherman’s shack on the blustery Scottish coast, but here in London, the best Green townhouses tend to go unremarked as such. While their decor may vary in style from subterranean Californian to retrofitted Victorian, these homes share a matrix of Green technology that’s mostly hidden. Not all of what goes into them is sexy (insulation), but it can be beautifully simple (skylights) and even surprising (whoever thought a heated swimming pool could be Green?). Of course, really significant reductions in fuel costs and carbon emissions need a national approach, and this is happening with new housing developments. Homeowners who can afford to kit out their entire house with sophisticated Green systems are still rare. and those who are keen, Green and solvent enough enough to invest in them are pioneers.

ARCHITECTURE

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— ‘It doesn’t have to look like a straw- bale house ... and in the background is all this stuff going on.’

Michaelis Boyd Associates gave David Cameron’s last home an eco retrofit that included insulation, solar panels, rainwater harvesting and, intriguingly, a wind turbine. “He wisely took [the turbine] down very quickly,” Alex Michaelis reveals. “Unless you’re on top of a hill, there’s no point.”

“Over the last ten years,” Michaelis says, “we have done a lot of environmental architecture.” In 2005 he made headlines with the subterranean house he built for himself and his family. Its modern “LA-style” design looks nothing like the other houses in Oxford Gardens, Notting Hill – although walking past you

would barely know it was there, hidden as it is behind a nearly two-metre wall. Peering over, all you’d see is his green roof, a jungle of wild thyme and other herbs and flowers depending on the season.

Michaelis bought the plot knowing that planning laws would be restrictive – in this case the rules stated he could not build higher than the wall surrounding it. But by digging down six and a half metres, he managed to create a unique, child-friendly house complete with indoor swimming pool, climbing wall, a trampoline and a slide that runs down from the living area to the bedrooms. “It’s great fun for kids,” he says.

Eco attributes include solar water heaters (“they work really well”), solar photovoltaic panels for electricity

ALEX MICHAELIS Michaelis Boyd Associates

ABOVE CORE / ARCHITECTURE

(“not so good”) and a green roof, a great insulator in winter. A borehole running 110-metres deep pumps water up to a ground source heat pump which provides under-floor heating, hot water for the house and, once filtered, drinking water. “It’s nice to be in touch with your own water supply,” says Michaelis. And there’s an additional benefit: the water tastes like “water but without chlorine”.

Surprisingly, the pool is all part of the set up. “People used to say, ‘you can’t have a pool – that’s not environmental’.’’ Instead, the pool acts as a heat sink. It’s heated a couple of degrees hotter than they want the house by the ground source heat pump and by insulating the heat with the house’s super-insulated walls and triple glazed windows it works as a “giant radiator”. If the rooms gets too hot in summer they just open a window. There is also a funnel of air from below the ground floor, which can be passed through the whole house.

What are the downsides? “I miss the sunrise and sunset,” the architect says. For Michaelis, one of

the best things about building his home was being able to show people that this kind of technology is possible and that “it doesn’t have to look like a straw- bale house. This is a very modern house that looks fantastic and in the background is all this stuff going on.” He also says the technology is now easy to work (after a couple of years of refining the system.)Is all this Green technology just an eco-status symbol for the wealthy or does it really lower fuel costs and help save the planet? “It’s only a status symbol when doing refurbishment projects in expensive property areas,” argues Michaelis. “Green technology is part of most new housing developments in the UK and abroad, and if subsidised better could be something for everyone.” Thanks to Green systems at his house, he says he saves about 60 % on heating and water bills.

With the limits to what technology can do, Michaelis stresses that you have to first reduce the energy needs of an existing house by insulating walls, windows and roofs and changing lighting systems before putting in fancy solar panels or heat pumps.

STANDOUT PROJECTS- A new-build eco development at Portland Road, west London, made up of three houses. - A full refurbishment of Eastcourt house, a 17th century, Grade II listed building in Wiltshire. The whole house is now heated by a woodchip burner and benefits from more natural light. - St James’s Close, a north London penthouse, which has a Green sedum roof and a natural irrigation system for the roof and terraces, amongst other eco features.

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1920s post-sorting office near Ladbroke Grove, west London, which she designed to be her own home. In the bedroom there is a magnificent skylight that floods the room with light. The triple triangular shape incorporates mirrors to create a play “where the sky and clouds are literally brought into the room.” In summer she hardly ever turns the lights on.

For Seilern, good Green design should not be based on box-ticking or services. “It’s not just about getting incredibly expensive geothermal pipes down into the ground, or burning woodchip that has to be shipped from Scotland down to London. There are so many ways of doing it.” Her way begins with some simple questions: how can you come up with a building that is a system in itself? How do you bring natural light in so you don’t have to use a light bulb? How do you

bring natural ventilation in the right places so you don’t have to air-condition the place? “To be less bad is not good enough. You’re trying to make the building self-sustaining and to limit its necessity to be on the grid.” Like the bedroom, the open-plan, loft-like living area of her house barely needs electrical light thanks to its system of natural light from windows. Placement of windows is crucial, Seilern explains, to avoid direct sunlight that can overheat your living space and turn a house into a greenhouse. Choosing the right type of glass (to let in natural light in and reject heat) is also important.

Seilern is currently working on a refurb of twin houses in Abingdon Road, just off High Street Kensington, combining the houses into one large family home. This project features another elegant example of passive design: a decorative light well that brings natural light streaming down into the open-plan living area. In the summer the skylight can be opened to create a natural air chimney to ventilate the entire house. In winter when the sun shines it’ll warm up the staircase – the core of the building. If there’s

too much sun you draw the blinds. This way “the stairs can become an environmental element of the building,” Seilern says.

The refurb also benefits from sophisticated Green technology, including an evaporative cooling system that uses rainwater stored in an underground tank to cool the house during the day via indoor fan units. “Green design is changing constantly,” adds Seilern. “Now the choices are much greater as there are many more opportunities.”

Although presently the price can be offputting, she believes Green design will become more prevalent as “systems such as geothermal become sophisticated, available and cheaper.”

CHRISTINA SEILERN Studio Steilern Architects— ‘To be less bad is not good enough. You’re trying to make the building self-sustaining and to limit its necessity to be on the grid.’

One of the biggest stumbling blocks Christina Steilern encounters with Green design, particularly with individual homes, is the cost. “You start a project with great ideas and when the client is faced with the bill of traditional air conditioning versus an eco-friendly system it’s a very difficult thing to defend and win.”

This is why she tries to introduce other methods. “Simple, really mundane, old-fashioned things like natural light and natural ventilation can make a big impact,” says Seilern. “That’s what I call ‘passive design’.” She illustrates this by showing me a renovated

STANDOUT PROJECTS - An off-the-grid new build perching on top of a granite rock overlooking the Gota Dam in Harare, Zimbabwe, incorporating simple Green technologies. - Serviced apart-ments in Mayfair, yet to be built. Known as the Whitehorse Street development, the plan is for “lean, clean, Green” energy and for a maximum of natural light and greenery: “a park within a building”.