An Old Garden Inspires a Passive House in the English Countryside

Building a home in the English countryside isn’t easy. A design must adhere to Paragraph 80 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), an exemption that, although somewhat vague in its language, requires a new home in a rural area be innovative, architecturally excellent, and sensitive to its surrounds. When architecture studio McLean Quinlan was approached to build a "home for life" in the rolling countryside of Devon in South West England, the firm’s architects knew they had a tall task at hand.

While the clients initially envisioned vaulted ceilings and barn-like rooms, the plans had to better respond to the site to meet muster. So McLean Quinlan looked at the 300-year-old country home that stood before, and, in a poetic nod, drafted a design that integrates with one of its still-standing garden walls.

"The new home slots into the historic landscape in a modest way," says architect Kate Quinlan. "It tucks in behind a facade that links back to the history of the site."

In fact, the home is so integrated into the historic brick wall that it’s almost easy to miss. "The clients have told us that there are quite a lot of confused delivery drivers that pull up outside and ask, ‘Where is the house?’" says Quinlan. "From the front, it’s not terribly obvious. The intent was always that there would be some ambiguity about whether it would be a building or a wall."

Breaking up the red-brick facade is a bay window and a front door that evokes a garden gate. This entrance leads to a "winter garden"—an indoor lounge area with a large skylight overhead—that is full of plants and pots that the clients have collected over the years. McLean Quinlan used reclaimed terra-cotta for the floors and clay plaster for the walls, playing with the conventions of interior and exterior spaces.

The rooms are located around this central garden, and the building is stepped to follow the slope of the site. The bedrooms are at the top of the slope while living spaces are at the bottom, where they open up to surrounding gardens to the west.

"The free movement around the entrance hall/winter garden and living spaces works to mix the feel of a gallery with a home, so treasured collections can be displayed among the day to day use of the space," explains Quinlan.

Further responding to the site’s history as a garden, the home opens up to the landscape on all sides. Facades are dark in color so that as plants grow up against the home, the built form will recede visually and the garden will take prominence.

Although attaining Passive House certification isn’t required in order to qualify for the Paragraph 80 exemption, designing and building a home along those parameters certainly helps. McLean Quinlan went the distance, achieving certification from the Passive House Institute by optimizing thermal gain, insulation, heat recovery, and airtightness.

"We knew that making a Passive House that didn’t look like a typical Passive House would be a challenge," says Quinlan. "The large skylight and bay window were particularly challenging."

Impressively, throughout the course of a year, Devon Passivhaus generates more energy than it consumes. "We are energy positive, with power generated exceeding power consumed by 40 percent," explains Quinlan. "In the summer months, the house generated 3,500 kilowatt-hours of electricity while only using 60 kilowatt-hours, with the remaining power fed back into the grid."

Quinlan is particularly proud of the home as a kind of experiment. "There are big things, like the data we’re still collecting on how the house performs," she says. "There are also small things, like how the basin in the bathroom is made from clay that came out of the ground when the foundations were dug. I also like how the house continues to evolve—it is a garden, after all. As the plants mature, the building will continue to blend with its surroundings as was always intended."

More from McLean Quinlan:

This Modern Stone Cabin Looks Like It Belongs in Middle-Earth

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: McLean Quinlan / @mcleanquinlan

Contractor: Goulden & Sons

Structural Engineer: Airey and Coles

Interior Design: McLean Quinlan

Cabinetry: Rozen

Passivhaus Consultant: Warm

Quantity Surveyor: Hosken Parks

Photographer: Jim Stephenson / @clickclickjim