The Cork House, designed by CSK Architects in collaboration with the Bartlett, will be the subject of the next Dezeen x Knauf Architecture Project Talk on Friday 11 June. Register now to watch the webinar.
Matthew Barnett Howland and Dido Milne from the Berkshire architecture studio will present the talk about their carbon-negative house, which was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize 2019, together with the Bartlett's Oliver Wilton.
The Cork House in Berkshire. Photography is by David Grandorge
Located on a small island in the River Thames, The Cork House is a single-storey dwelling comprising a row of five volumes with pyramid-like roofs and walls made from blocks of expanded cork.
The sustainable building was developed to address the architecture industry's contribution to biodiversity loss, carbon emissions and the depletion of planetary resources. Barnett Howland, Milne and Wilton used expanded cork as the building's primary construction material because it generates less waste during manufacturing than traditional materials.
The dwelling is made from sustainably sourced cork blocks. Photography is by David Grandorge
Expanded cork also reincorporates leftover product, as it is made from the waste that results when harvesting bark from cork trees.
Additionally, harvesting the bark does not fell trees, which allows landscapes populated by cork oak to retain their biodiversity, a term used to describe the number and variety of species in an ecosystem.
The resulting buildin...