The Architect Is In: A Passive Solar House for a Family of Stargazers - Remodelista
Photography by Jennifer Beningfield. This weekend Jennifer Beningfield, founding principal of London’s Openstudio Architects and a member of the Remodelista Architect/Designer Directory, talks to us about a passive solar house she designed in the Great Karoo, a semidesert region of South Africa. The Scenario: A family of stargazers want to build an energy-efficient vacation place in a faraway location that is the antithesis of their home in London. The Solution: Beningfield turns to the age-old principles of passive solar building design to create a house that heats and cools itself–without technology. Let the language of the architecture develop from the surrounding environment. The site conditions–sun angles, the surrounding Swartberg mountain range, and harsh temperatures– determined that the house have an east-west orientation and an irregular floor plan (with spaces at varying heights). “The house’s orientation means that primary rooms with large openings, such as the living room, face north and catch the sun during most of the day,” says Beningfield. The limited materials palette unfolds in the living spaces, where the finish on the walls is the same limewash-on-rough-cast plaster that’s on the exterior. Ash reappears in the dining room, where it’s used for bookshelves. “There are no surface-mounted light fittings in the house; all the lights are integrated into the architecture or joinery details,” says Beningfield. In the dining room, the view is to the south, across a neighbor’s vineyard and toward the Swartberg mountains. In the kitchen, the cabinets are faced with ash veneer and have turned handles of solid ash. “The brick floor is just a paving brick laid on edge, but we were very careful about the patterns in which it has been laid,” says Beningfield. In the winter afternoon sun, shadows from an external wood shutter are cast on the brick floor in the living room. “In the summer, a cooling wind blows from the mountains, and the tall spaces of the living room and library have high shutters that dissipate hot air during the day and bring in the cooling breeze at night,” says Beningfield. The minimalist palette continues in the hallway that leads to the master bedroom suite. In the winter with the shutters open, the dark brick floor collects and stores heats and then radiates it in the evening when it’s cooler. On the terrace, metal-framed, ash shutters slide on bottom-rolling tracks and are used to create shade and a degree of insulation. The various volumes of the house were put to use as a rooftop escape: “The owners can retreat into different spaces on the roof depending on the time of day, the season, and how much privacy they’re seeking.” “During the summer, the evenings are warm and the desert sky is full of stars,” says Beningfield. “The house has an interesting scale. It looks small against the mountains but also has a significant presence in the landscape.” Of the western elevation, shown here, Beningfield says, “We didn’t add many openings because the sun is burning hot in the summer.” The ground-floor plan of the house illustrates its east-west orientation and irregular floor plan. The second-floor plan illustrates the separate volumes that form the roofscape, including the circular seating and a long bench that can be used for lying down to take in the stars. A drawing of the main elevation shows the sliding wood doors that can be closed to block the sun and opened for air circulation. Gardenista contributor Marie Viljoen takes us on a tour of her Mother’s Garden Outside Cape Town.