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Ardnamurchan Zero Carbon Bothy

Highland

Project Details

£100,000 to £249,999

Practice

Resonant Architecture

31 Bartlemas Road , OXFORD , OX4 1XU

Situated close to the Atlantic Oak woods of Ardnamurchan, this house is ancilliary to a main house (a bothy), and draws influence from vernacular outbuildings using traditional profiled steel and locally sourced timber cladding. The building is constructed using a timber panel system, with timber and plaster internal finishes. Its cladding is milled from renewable timber sources within 8km of the site, and its foundations support legs that lift the building away from the ground and reduce concrete volumes. Due to these measures the building is carbon neutral (‘zero carbon’) from the point of view of its embodied energy. In use, electrical power for lighting is derived from on-site photovoltaic panels, and supplemented by local hydroelectric sources. The house is super-insulated and designed to maximize winter solar gain and minimize heat loss, with heating provided by a single wood-fired stove. Fuel for the stove is supplied from the same local renewable larch forests as used in the cladding.