A highly sustainable, low-carbon, wheelchair-accessible five-bedroom home in Nately Scures.

Claywood House in a beautiful setting of Nately Scures is a new five bedroom low-carbon home designed to enable the newly wheelchair-using owner to live independently. The house gives expansive views out over the countryside with a large cantilevering first floor set at right angles to the ground floor box. The shape of the building responds to the complex geometry of the topography and the site boundary and works with the slope of the site to reduce the visual impact to the surrounding area. The house is cut away to direct views across the garden and away from the former home. We carried out the structural engineering for the house and outbuildings which features a large cantilevering living area and therefore, managing deflection of the structure was a key issue.

The structure is typically a two-storey new build steel framed building with timber infill supported off blockwork walls at ground floor. Load bearing timber studwork and blockwork maximised to limit volume of steelwork required. The new building is fully accessible with a lift and provides facilities for the specialist care required by the client including a subterranean physiotherapy pool, gym and carer’s suite which is founded on mini piles. 

The house incorporates a ground source heat pump, a 12kW photovoltaic array and a mechanical heat recovery ventilation system. Further, the building envelope is extremely well insulated and airtight thereby creating a highly sustainable new building. 

Location
Basingstoke, UK

Architect
Ayre Chamberlain Gaunt