Architecture studio Cairn has used hand-poured hempcrete to form the rough textured walls at House Made by Many Hands, an extension of a Victorian home in east London.
Approached to redesign the "dark and cramped" home in Hackney, London and Edinburgh-based Cairn reconfigured and expanded its ground floor using a palette of low-carbon and bio-based materials.
Cairn has used hand-poured hempcrete in this London house extension
This includes hempcrete ? a bio-composite material made from hemp and lime ? which has been used to form the extension's walls.
Meanwhile, its floor slab was created with LC3, a type of low-carbon cement made with limestone and calcined clay, which Cairn said is the first of its kind in the UK.
It has been added to a Victorian home in east London "We saw this project as a prototype for how a Victorian house might be renovated and extended with approaches that have a far lower environmental impact than the typical use of concrete, steel frame and plasterboard," founding director Kieran Hawkins told Dezeen.
As the client is a chef, the renovation centres around a large kitchen at the heart of the ground floor lit by a strip of skylights along one side.
The kitchen has been designed as the heart of the project
To maximise the feeling of openness, almost all internal doors were removed, with both the existing brick pillars and new timber columns framing views from the entrance out to a small patio at the rear. It also benefits from high...