Housing Innovation Awards 2016
In 2016 John McCall Architects will
reach the 25th anniversary as an
architectural practice, designing all
forms of housing for sale, rent and for
people with special needs, along with
commercial and community architecture,
focused on the aspirations of clients,
users and residents. We believe that
sustainability should be central to every
project and that client and end user
energy costs should be mitigated to
reduce levels of fuel poverty.
The company is run by 4 directors
and 2 associate directors providing
leadership to the senior and junior staff
in a flat hierarchy to provide excellent
experience and opportunity for personal
advancement in training and career
prospects within the business. Staff
retention is consequently high and most
of the senior staff have been with the
practice since qualifying.
As architects our desire is to build great
buildings which meet the client brief,
provide good spaces inside the building
and benefit the local community. We also
aim to enjoy doing it!
From the inception of the practice we
have endeavoured to provide a service
which focusses on the client and end
users. Wherever possible we provide
sustainable solutions and design our
buildings to provide low energy and low
running cost homes.
The house at Lang Lane was designed
to provide the highest level of thermal
performance within a defined budget.
The design used the Passivhaus
methodology as the background concept,
but altered to improve buildability,
cost efficiency and environmental
performance. The intention was to reduce
the energy usage to within the Passivhaus
target, but in use it has proved to exceed
this, achieving annual energy costs of
£15 per annum and a CO2 output of just
11Kg.
Throughout the life of our practice we
have established a reputation for being
able to deliver economical, well designed
high quality schemes for our clients. The
practice is value focused on our client’s
requirements and we ensure that our
team have a clear understanding of our
client’s delivery needs and aspirations
and bring to the team a right first time
collaborative approach to provide best
value for money.
By addressing all of the ways that
buildings waste energy, exceptionally
low energy bills for the householder
have been accomplished. The strategy
addresses the 5 main issues of
orientation, insulation, air tightness,
thermal mass and volume which were
carefully considered along with heating,
ventilation and energy generation to
maximise the thermal performance of the
house.
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