Design Concept
Sky House is nestled within a secluded hollow on a hillside in South West England, commanding breathtaking views across the rugged landscape. To the south, the land drops steeply away, leaving the horizon dominated by sky; a constantly shifting canvas of English weather that the design seeks to capture and celebrate.
The clients approached KHA wanting to transform a tired 1970s dwelling to better suit modern family life and to create a home environmentally fit for the 21st century. Within its protective new envelope of super-insulated walls and triple-glazed windows, the house now offers exceptional thermal performance while preserving the original structural core.
This deep retrofit transforms what was once a confusing tangle of interlocking spaces into a clear and elegant composition of two distinct volumes: a primary living space and a secondary bedroom section. Between them, a transparent link connects the two, framing views and light.
The exterior is clad in a refined palette of pale buff Creeton limestone and whitewashed British larch, anchored by a dark grey slate roof. Each material has been carefully detailed to emphasise natural texture and depth, responding to changing sunlight and shadow throughout the day.
The stonework is laid with open joints to evoke the character of traditional dry-stone walls, while the vertical timber cladding varies across three board widths to create a subtly random rhythm. This variation not only enriches the façade but allows flexibility when aligning with existing openings, avoiding awkward junctions. The slate roof, highly visible from surrounding vantage points, is crafted from rough 7mm slates, with all junctions finished in lead for longevity and refinement.
Inside, the home continues this dialogue of texture, light, and views where the result is a composition that balances contemporary minimalism with warmth, colour, and playfulness.
The entry sequence is designed for a busy family, beginning with a sheltered porch leading into a light-filled and airy hall that reveals the home’s organisation at a glance. To the right are the boot room and utility spaces; to the left, the bedrooms. A short flight of steps leads upward to the main living volume, the heart of the home and open to the ridge and flooded with light.
The primary living areas form an L-shaped plan across two half-levels. The kitchen, set within the glazed link, enjoys a large corner window framing expansive views, while the dining area rises to a ridge skylight where exposed timber beams cast delicate shifting shadows. Half a level up, the living room feels more intimate, oriented once again to the landscape and centred on a tiled fireplace, built-in storage, and bench seating that nods to mid-century modern design. The upper level houses the master suite, guest room, and study.
Radical Retrofit
Sky House stands as part of a new generation of exemplary environmental retrofits across the UK; projects that prioritise reuse and recycling to dramatically reduce embodied carbon compared with new construction. Sky House has an embodied carbon reading of only 266 kgCO2e/m2, comfortably meeting the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge.
Here, the vast majority of the original building fabric has been retained. The design challenge lay in simplifying the confusing existing layout and working with an awkward site layout; neither of which is conducive to easily achieving the desired environmental outcome. Layers of new insulation and re-cladding have transformed both its appearance and performance. Upon completion, the house achieved an airtightness result of 1.9 m³/(h·m²) at 50 Pascals — a remarkable figure given the complexity of the original form and the challenges of upgrading 1970s cavity walls.
Sky House demonstrates what can be accomplished through rigorous detailing and collaboration. Designed to achieve a 90% reduction in operational energy use, the project bettered this on completion, and in its first year of use operated on only 38kwh/m2/year. Given that there were teething issues with the Air-Source Heat Pump and several months of external works being carried out post first use, it is likely that the project will meet the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge on Operational Energy Use by next year.
All residual energy demand is met through a fossil-free air-source heat pump, whilst an MVHR system ensures consistent indoor temperature, excellent air-quality and stable humidity levels throughout the year. The result is a home that performs exceptionally - it is warm, comfortable, and deeply connected to its landscape.
