Pontesbury Hill Road.

Project Overview

Pontesbury Hill Road is a development of three sustainable dwellings in the picturesque surroundings of Pontesbury. Located on the edge of the village, Pontesbury Hill is roughly 8.5miles to the Southwest of Shrewsbury and boasts a desirable country living aesthetic, which the client wanted to maximise.

The original brief was to design several dwellings that reside and blend into the surroundings seamlessly: for our client and his family who have had local connections throughout their lives. Strict planning policy has ensured that our design intensions are predominantly stipulated by a series of complex planning decisions that have allowed for the formation of one open market dwelling and two affordable dwellings providing certain design criteria is met.

Stipulations on the floor area and materiality meant a limit to what we could do. With continued dialogue and collaborative design discussion we have balanced the wishes of our client, the local parish council and their design guide, and the local planning authority.

The semi-detached homes are based on the lifetime homes principles to ensure minimum space standards are met for affordable dwellings, with the final proposals indeed providing more than required in a design style that reflects the distinctive local vernacular.

The larger detached home uses the same vernacular styling but with a larger footprint and also picks up on local farmhouse features, with oversailing roofs, dormer windows and brick plinth.

Assimilation into the community is completed by a stone wall on the front boundary announcing the front entrance to the development.

It is proposed that these homes are built to Passivhaus or very high energy efficiency standards, making use of renewable technology such as mechanical ventilation heat recovery system, air source heat pump heating, Solar PV and solar wall batteries to help reduce carbon emissions and reliability on the national grid.