What Makes an Award-Winning Home?

ABOVE: This radical remodelling of a 1930s bungalow (to be featured in an upcoming issue) proves that contemporary design can work well with natural, sustainable materials (Read more about this renovation).

Schemes like The Daily Telegraph Homebuilding & Renovating Awards not only celebrate the remarkable achievements of individuals who set out on what is truly one of life’s great journeys — they are also a brilliant showcase for the very best new ideas in home design, construction and interior design.

Every year the Awards reveals new emerging trends and themes, many of which a few years later find their way into mainstream housing. Self-builders have always been at the forefront of innovation in house design and willing to try out new design ideas, products and technologies.

Over recent years these trends have included underfloor heating, mechanical ventilation and heat recovery, mood lighting, open plan kitchen and living spaces, greater levels of insulation, solar panels, heat pumps and more. These self-build trends are grad u - ally adopted by higher-end developers — some then find their way into the Building Regulations and therefore all new housing.

So what are the emerging trends in the very best homes of 2009 — features that you can expect to see in many more homes in years to come and maybe your own? We look at what makes a good home truly exceptional.

Good Design

Some of the design qualities that make an award-winning house are simply those that form the basis of all good house design. This includes a practical and sensible response the characteristics of the site, its orientation, topography, views and the immediate surroundings.

Suitability for the living requirements of the owners is vital: the home needs to be laid out in a practical and space-efficient way, making optimum use of the built volume and natural light, with good circulation between rooms, and a clear division of public and private spaces; for example, the reception rooms and bedroom accommodation.

The materials, finishes and detailing all need to be appropriate to the style and quality of the house, well thought out, and thoroughly robust. This requires lots of design input and a very competent builder.

ABOVE: No longer a dusty afterthought, basements – such as this in the renovation of a mews house in Belgravia, London (to be featured in an upcoming issue) – are becoming key living spaces, thanks in part to the introduction of vertical natural lighting (through glass floors). Watch a short video about this property.

Sustainability

No one can now afford to ignore the issue of sustainability when building or renovating, and although many self-builders still choose to build very large houses, with a correspondingly oversized carbon footprint, this is at least mitigated if the design and materials are environmentally responsible.

Even the biggest of the houses in this year’s Awards included sustainable design features. The large Scottish Baronial-style country house was built from a highly energy-efficient timber frame, and also designed to be run via a heat pump powered by a water turbine — a feature the owners hope to install in the future.

As well as taking orientation and passive solar gain into account, sustainable materials have been widely used, especially timber cladding and timber frame construction, all with high levels of insulation.

Energy-efficient heating, although not a design feature in itself, is also a major theme, with many owners designing their homes to have a sufficiently low heat requirement to run from a heat pump, either ground or air source. 2009 was definitely the year of the heat pump, with several houses featuring no conventional boiler — so no gas or oil bill for them.

Site-Specific Materials

Using locally sourced materials is inherently sustainable and therefore considered to be a good thing, but using materials that have a connection with the local environment also helps a building to relate to its setting and thereby fit in more naturally.

There has been a move towards using vernacular materials in new dwellings, driven in part at least by the planners, who are keen to preserve regional architectural traditions.

This trend remains very strong amongst those building for themselves. John and Janet Warren’s oak frame home in Cheshire revived the area’s local tradition of half-timbered housing and used the traditional local Staffordshire blue clay tiles on the roof. It has already managed to become a seamless part of the local fabric, thanks to the use of vernacular materials.

ABOVE: There was no way to get natural light into the heart of this renovated mews house — so the designers introduced a lightwell serving all four storeys. Spacially inefficient, but a real success (Read more about this project).

Great Aesthetics

Although aesthetics are a subjective matter, when a house has the ‘wow factor’ it reaches everyone pretty much universally.

A great house usually has several features that are inspirational, spectacular and clever, and the houses in this year’s Awards have all of this. These features often involve great subtlety and exacting detail to get right, even when they appear to be very simple.

Ways to create the ‘wow factor’ often come from the use of a view, either through the property – typically across an open plan ground floor – or perhaps on and out into the garden. A great view can be turned into a spectacular view through clever framing, using carefully shaped window openings designed to emphasise some aspects, whilst screening off others.

The unexpected can also be very effective; for instance, a contraction of space before entering a large room can be a surprise and can emphasise its scale through the contrast, and make it all the more impressive.

A magnificent piece of design such as a feature staircase, a double-height space or a gallery can also work very well in all scales of property. Sometimes, though, it comes from the sheer beauty of the interior design, the floor finishes, colours, textures and lighting, which together create an ambience that is all enveloping.

The truly great houses combine all of these features and more.

Further reading:

• Award-Winning Homes: Design Trends
• The Essence of Good House Design
• Find out more about how to design a house

Find out more about the Homebuilding & Renovating Awards