study, garage, downstairs bathroom and an
open-plan living/dining/kitchen area. On the first
floor, reached by a hand-built oak and stainless
steel open-tread staircase, there is a library area,
created by cantilevering the landing in a gallery
style. It is highlighted by a stunning glass
pendant light-fitting which makes a huge impact
hanging over the hallway and stairs.
The stylish simplicity of modular homes such
as Huf-Haus attracted David and Deanna, not
least because they are easy to maintain
externally. And because Wisbech is just 12
miles from the sea (The Wash nature reserve),
they liked the idea of a New England-style
cladded exterior.
Both their visual and practical ambitions have
been achieved using long-lasting, low-
maintenance render and HardiePlank fibre
cement cladding, along with a zinc-clad
aluminium roof and aluminium windows with an
internal timber face.
“What we most definitely weren’t interested in
was building a boring box,” says David. He
adds: “We were looking for perhaps what you
might call a non-conventional architect,
someone who would understand and interpret
what we were thinking of.”
Luckily, they didn’t have to look far. Russell
Swann, of Wisbech-based Swann Edwards
Architecture, lives in the neighbouring village, in
a sustainable home with a strong contemporary
thread. They invited him for a meeting anddiscovered that his ideas chimed with their own.
“The back of the house is all glass,” says
Deanna. “And the front is quite imposing as you
come down the road. A lot of people who know
me locally couldn’t believe that I wanted to live
in an house like this, but over the years we have
lived in all kinds of houses including a bungalow
and our Georgian one, so the idea of having a
contemporary-style house didn’t faze me at all –
in fact it was really exciting.”
“Thermal performance was always one of
my criteria,” adds David. “We were spending
around £3,000 per annum on energy bills in the
old place. One of my targets was to slash that
cost, especially because as we get older,
incomes become pretty fixed.”
To achieve this crucial aim, Russell brought
together both ‘passive’ and ‘active’ design
strategies to design a house with carbon
neutrality and sustainability to the fore.
This meant manipulating the site’s particular
characteristics and climatic conditions to
optimise the building design and combining
this approach with efficient M&E (monitoring
and engineering) systems and renewable
technologies.
“By making the building the right shape with
carefully-placed windows, entries, exits and
rooms, we were able to reduce its energy
consumption by 30 to 40 per cent,” he says.
Underpinning this strategy is a clever
exploitation of the building’s orientation. TheDECOR
Deanna describes the interior
décor scheme as
“contemporary classic”62www.sbhonline.co.uk september/october 2019