Architect Sarah Wigglesworth has carried out an extensive upgrade and retrofit of the influential Stock Orchard Street home in London to improve its energy performance and age-proof its interiors.
The extensive overhaul of the home, which won the 2004 RIBA Sustainability Award and doubles as the office for Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, has resulted in a 62 per cent reduction of its annual carbon dioxide emissions.
Its bathroom, kitchen and circulation spaces have also been made more accessible and fitted with various mobility aids to better support wellbeing and independent living in old age.
Stock Orchard Street is the home and workplace of Wigglesworth
Officially called Stock Orchard Street, but known widely as Straw Bale House, the home in north London was designed by Wigglesworth and her partner Jeremy Till, the head of Central Saint Martins. Described by Wigglesworth as a "plaything", it was used as a testbed for green technologies and unusual building materials, with the intention of showing that sustainable architecture can be built in urban areas and does not require sacrificing style.
The home's building envelope has been renewed to make it more energy efficient
Among the home's most notable features include the use of straw bales as insulation and walls that are made from unusual materials including sandbags, recycled concrete and railways sleepers.
For this reason, it is regarded as one of the most groundbreaking buildings of the 21st-century the U...