With its thick undulating walls and green roof, this villa in England translates the architecture of traditional Celtic fortifications into the language of sustainability. Tonkin Liu Architects‘s Ness Point House is a castle-like structure that protects its occupants from the elements while achieving a high level of energy efficiency.
The house occupies a cliff top site in Dover, South East England, and functions as an airtight shelter that utilizes passive and active sustainable design features. It utilizes heat recovery and solar thermal renewable systems to maximize energy efficiency in the winter, while the long gallery skylight and eco-vents enable passive cooling during the hot summer.
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The undulating plan and inclined sections create a cavernous internal space that offers flexibility of use and captures changing lighting conditions. As if growing out of the land, the house is covered in a vegetative roof that slopes downward at the rear of the site.
Lead photo by Nick Guttridge
