residence
Cairn, 2023
2 Connor Street, E9 7LG
Winner of the Environmental Leadership Prize in the 2024 Don't Move Improve Awards, House Made by Many Hands is the first building structure in the UK to specify low-carbon LC3 concrete, together with hand-cast hempcrete walls, a hardwood frame in place of traditional steel, natural materials throughout and a rigorous policy of reuse and recycling for the interior.
Bethnal Green
Cambridge Heath, Homerton, London Fields
254, 277, 425
Walking tour of a terraced house. There are steps to access different floor levels. Private house so please take care.
Working against the grain and thinking outside the conventional steel and stud wall box, architecture practice Cairn has pioneered use of a new low-carbon concrete in a house renovation and extension in Hackney, east London. Commissioned by an environmentally conscious client, the compact Victorian house renovation has been a testbed for LC3, a new kind of concrete which has the capacity to reduce total global CO2 emissions by 1-2% if adopted universally by the construction industry. The project demonstrates how a Victorian house can be renovated and extended with a substantially reduced environmental impact – 40% lower than a typical build deploying conventional concrete, steel frame box and plasterboard.
Located on a densely-inhabited, car-free street, the two-storey terraced 77m² house occupies a constrained site with no back garden and only a thin strip of external space. As found, it was dark and cramped. The challenge was to work with what was there, designing as sustainably as possible through reuse and repurposing of existing materials to bring it up to modern day standards, creating a homely and productive new kitchen for its owner, a chef with a background in sustainable agriculture.
Client and architect were committed to repurposing and, where new materials were necessary, bio-based materials - hempcrete, cork, woodfibre, woodwool, and lime plaster – were specified, to improve health and wellbeing benefits.
The client and her partner have also actively participated in the project, working alongside the contractor and architect to cast by hand the hempcrete walls (timber framed with exposed hempcrete infill). The decision to make the walls by hand, replacing power tools with human energy, resulted in a rewarding collective activity and a project made by many hands.
The approach to the base-build of the home is complemented by the furnishing and fittings within. These are re-used and given a second life wherever possible, such as the timber floor which has been reclaimed from Bow Magistrates Court and a collection of secondhand furniture and light fittings. The client was determined not to use new items, unless unavoidable, so that the house is imbued with character and unique histories.
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Join us this year at 'TIME' '24 for an assemblage of workshops and creative out-reach projects, communicating through artistic expression the notion of time and place in gesture and performance through drawing, painting, portraiture, sculpture, poetry, photography and film, capturing individuality, in the street, and beyond, to sow the seeds of a new time.
Unknown, 1890
