Titchfield

Porter Robson developed a single-storey home conceived around the relationship between architecture, landscape and environmental performance.

The design responds directly to the orientation and character of its garden setting. A gently curved plan opens the principal living spaces towards the southern aspect, maximising natural light and creating a continuous relationship between the interior and landscaped gardens. The current arrangement brings the kitchen, dining and living spaces together along this sweeping garden frontage, with private accommodation and ancillary rooms arranged behind.

A broad, low-profile roof reinforces the horizontal character of the house and provides generous overhangs to the glazed elevations. These overhangs form part of the passive environmental strategy: allowing beneficial solar gain at cooler times of year while providing shading during the summer months. The feasibility work establishes solar orientation and views as fundamental generators of the plan rather than additions to an already resolved building.

The material palette of flint walling, timber cladding, dark aluminium glazing and zinc roofing combine robust local materials with precise contemporary detailing. Large areas of curtain walling are balanced by more solid masonry elements, creating a building that alternates between openness to the landscape and a sense of enclosure and permanence. Green roof areas further soften the building when seen within its garden setting.

Environmental performance has been embedded within the design from the outset. The project is being developed around a fabric-first and passive solar approach, combining high levels of insulation and airtightness with thermal mass, natural ventilation, summer shading and carefully positioned glazing. The environmental strategy also explores MVHR, on-site renewable energy generation and Passivhaus Plus principles, with the ambition of achieving exceptionally low operational energy demand.

The landscape is treated as part of the architecture rather than simply its setting. Existing hedgerows and mature vegetation are intended to be retained and reinforced, while new native planting, trees, green roofs and habitat features support biodiversity and help moderate the microclimate around the house.

Solar House brings these ideas together in a home designed not only for the client's needs today, but for comfortable, accessible single-storey living over the long term. The result is intended to demonstrate how a contemporary home can be architecturally distinctive while remaining closely connected to its landscape and radically reducing its environmental impact.