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Comment: Site photo showing the wooded character of the site. The land slopes west, with a view over Brantome (in winter when the leaves have fallen). Site is 40 m wide and 104 m long - nearly 4000 msq (an acre) and entirely covered with a mixture of mostly young oak trees, a few maritime pines, some chestnuts and hazel.
Original conception in 2002 - garage and house linked by a roofed area carrying solar photovoltaic collectors. More collectors on the main roof providing domestic hot water. Super-insulated walls and roof, all of timber construction. Main house sits on top of basement (sous sol) with studio and spare bedroom. This early design had a 'sun space' on the south corner which modelling with SPIEL showed was less effective than direct solar gain to the living area.
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Jan 30, 2006 - 12:03 PM
Later design drawing (2005)after the project had been postponed for a couple of years for reasons of finance. By that time we had had further thoughts and sited the house further down away from the road in a slight clearing in the middle of the woodland and on a steeper slope, allowing a larger sous sol or basement and cellar floor level with bigger studio and spare bedroom. In this position no mature trees had to be cut down. Square plan with minimum surface area and a vertical rooflight over the mezzanine level. Area of solar collectors increased.

Drawing of the approach to the house - there are a lot of trees on this side and the house will be hardly visible from the road, which is a quiet cul-de-sac. (See later photorealistic renders superimposed on photos of the site)

Early interior layout (now revised) using TurboCAD to model it. Living area with mezzanine above and kitchen on the right.

Mezzanine looking towards the stair. the far end of the mezzzanine level will eventually be partitioned off as another bedroom.

Nighttime view of the TurboCAD model from the south . I sarted doing the 2005 design using TurboCAD - a very user-friendly CAD system capable of quite good fast rendered perspectives, and excellent for 2-D drawing. But the French Architect Mr Lanterne, who prepared the documents for the planning permission application, used ArchiCAD, and so I was persuaded to switch and learn to use that, so that the model and drawings I produced would be compatible. In France any house over 170 square metres must be presented for planning consent by a French Architect.
Album last updated on Feb 26, 2008 - 06:45 AM
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