Our house conversion project on the bank of Mjøsa lake, 90km north of Oslo, is nearing completion. Interior work progressed well these last few weeks and, with the winter now receeding, the exterior insulation and landscaping will soon start. Great work by our client and builder Chriss Brohaug.

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Continuing to explore the possibilities of the cardboard construction module developed for the Lost Cuckoo project, Marcus Rowlands and 2hD Architects ran a lecture/workshop with first year Interior Architecture student, at Nottingham Trent University's School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment.

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The interior restoration of our two-century-old barn in southern France is almost completed, with all its stone walls repointed and the ceiling of the new insulated roof painted. Credits to our self-builder clients for their amazing work!

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The erection of the internal timber structure has also started. We planned the layout of the converted barn so that interior work could be organised in three independent phases: after this initial phase, our clients will be able to start inhabiting the barn, while continuing to work on the rest of the internal structure. Eventually, this first part of the structure will serve as a bedroom for their future guesthouse.

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More photos of the project on our clients' blog...

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Now a proud resident of the Kingdom of Norway, I see it as my duty to take part in all the crazy outdoor activities that the locals so enthusiastically tell me about. So, after just five months on Norwegian soil, I took part with my father in this year's Downhill Kick Sled World championship, as the only French representatives of the competition...

Called Spark in Norwegian, the Norwegian kick sled is a beautiful balance between utter flimsiness and aggressive ice carving, between old style traditional craftsmanship and modern minimalism.

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So, with basically no training, we flung ourselves on a spark down 4.5km of icy winding roads on the hills of Hurdal at up to 40km/h, an honourable speed considering how little control we could exert on our trajectory. Here's an overview of our performance in all its helmet-cam glory:

Glad to have survived this trial, we will be starting the training for next year's championship as soon as the first snow hits the Norwegian hills.

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We have put together this short video about our Lost Cuckoo project with artist Marcus Rowlands from the DVD produced by the Lakeside Art Centre, who hosted the event last year.

The project was great fun and we are looking forward to developing this concept in other art festivals this year!

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It is now official: in addition to our office in Nottingham, we have opened a branch of 2hD Architects in Oslo, Norway.

We already have a few projects underway, including the conversion of a workshop into an family home on the bank of the Mjøsa lake and two mountain skiing cabins on the slope of the Renåfjellet. Exciting times!

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After 122 bags of lime mortar and 8 months of hard work, Mélanie and Béranger, our self-builders in France, have completed the repointing of 200 sqm of stone wall in their converted barn in Dordogne! Beautiful result and a major achievement before starting to build the internal timber structure next month.

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Photos by Béranger Hau. More on our clients' blog...

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We're designing a new build house for a village in Nottinghamshire, using the PassivHaus Planning Package as a design tool.

The site has an excellent orientation, allowing extensive use of passive and active solar collection to the rear of the property. The north, street-facing facade has been developed to respond sensitively to its Conservation Area setting.

The project is currently going through consultation with the village residents and Local Authority planning department prior to the submission of a planning application.

Sustainability_strategy.pdf Download this file

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First site visit to one of our upcoming Norwegian projects: two mountain cabins on the slopes of Renåfjellet, at a ski resort overlooking the Ren valley, about 300km North of Oslo.

Great views and plenty of moist reindeer moss!

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The Tune house is now on site, with the roof going up. The project, located on the bank of the Mjøsa, Norwegian's largest lake, involves the rebuilding of a two-story building into a family house and an attached workshop.

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We are reusing part of the existing concrete structure — an unusal object in the Norwegian housing world! — and fully glazing the south facing gable wall to frame stunning views to the surrounding hills and neighbouring lake.

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This project is currently on the drawing board in the practice, and we thought it worth sharing some interesting aspects of the process so far.

We started out with a client with a beautiful property... that is unfortunately an energy guzzler and has a layout that just doesn't work for the family's lifestyle. The house features a half-timbered front and an interior with many Art Deco, Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts features. The rear elevation however has many problems with the detailing and a too-hot/too-cold (and out of keeping) conservatory.

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We brought Hockerton Housing Project in to create a 'Home Energy Masterplan' for the property. They thoroughly surveyed the existing fabric and identified cost-effective and practical methods to improve the energy performance of the building. Their report identified measures and payback times for a range of approaches, from the 'no brainer' moves that would pay off straight away to the 'green halo' measures that improve sustainability but might not pay off for years or even decades to come. 

We took that information and worked with Branch Construction, an environmentally aware building company, to develop budget costing and buildability strategies on a number of different design options. Having worked out what the current problems were with the house, we developed some ideas for solving them and creating an amazing new home for our client. This centres around a completely remodeled core to the house, linking front to back and interior to garden.

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Finally, we rated the options for cost/buildability, sustainability and design – presenting the conclusions as an architectural strategy report. You can download a public version of this report.

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This thorough-going approach has helped our client through some tough decisions on the project scope, and the trade-offs between cost, sustainability and payback time. Having established a scheme that can be completed as a Permitted Development (not requiring planning permission) we are now developing the project into the detailed design stage.

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We're proud to announce that our inflatable pavilion for Lille Museum of Modern Art has been awarded an RIBA East Midlands 2011 award.

The annual Awards celebrate 'excellence in architecture and encouraging sustainable design' and were held at the Athena in Leicester on 22nd September.

Tom and Alina accepted the award from Ruth Reid, ex President of the RIBA and were joined at the ceremony by Nick Crosbie of Inflate, who did the specialist design, fabrication and erection of the pavilion.

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The architectural news blog ArtHitectural has published an article about our inflatable event space, recently shortlisted for the World Architecture Festival Awards 2011 in Barcelona.

You can read the full article on ArtHitectural...

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The Architects' Journal reveals the list of all entries shortlisted for the World Architecture Festival Awards 2011, including our inflatable pavilion for Lille Museum of Modern Art, in France.

Read the full article...

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Our inflatable pavilion for the Lille Museum of Modern Art, in France, has just been shortlisted for World Architecture Festival Awards 2011. No need to say we are chuffed!

We'll be presenting the project to the jury in Barcelona on 3rd November. We are shortlisted in the Display category, along with seven other projects from all around the world.

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The new roof is on and first sheepswool in place for this garage conversion in north Nottingham.

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We have something of a dream team for us on this project, with an all-female building team led by Clare Davies, Price and Myers engineers and Turton doing building control. Add a client with genuine passion for environmentally friendly building and it promises be a very nice project indeed.

Update: October and the project is nearing completion. With the mezzanine installed and the walls insulated, plastered and painted it is really taking shape. Nice joinery work from Clare and this is turning into a desirable, cosy living space.

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Almost 9 months since our last visit to the Sokolovica settlement in the mountains of Southern Serbia, and our permaculture approach seems to be paying off…

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The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the making. I spent Sunday volunteering at the site of our Childrens' Home project, helping them to get the building phase of their Living Room project underway.

It's been a fascinating project to be involved in. We were approached by The Mighty Creatives who were looking for someone who could work with the staff and residents at the Home to redesign their living room, making use of IT to communicate and visualise the process. In the end, we used StickyWorld and SketchUp with the LightUp plug-in… and if we could have found another software with a JoinedUp name, we'd have considered that too.

It's a tiny but intense project, and I found the design process really challenging. Working on occupied houses is always pretty involved, as being invited into the home requires a great deal of sensitivity to residents' preferences and relationships. At the same time, your own knowledge and experience as 'the professional' needs to be given a voice. As you'd imagine this particular living space is charged with a lot of meaning for many different people... But, by working together, we gradually achieved a design that everyone could take pride in.

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The idea is that as much of the making work as possible is done by the staff and residents of the home, but I invited myself along on Sunday to lend a hand as they got underway. The electrian had already been in to do the first fix, so the next stage was setting out the studwork for the 'portal' feature, the lighting raft and the storage/entertainment wall. We made pretty good progress- a bit slowed by the effort of breaking up the world's densest fireplace hearth, but by the end of the day the design was beginning to pop off the page and in to the space. I loved being there to see this happen and hope to be back again as the project progresses.

In the meantime, we made a little film to celebrate the success of the collaborative design, and keep spirits up during the hard messy work ahead:

Living Room Project from 2hD Architects on Vimeo.

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Mélanie and Béranger have been working hard on their self-build barn conversion during these last months. After creating the new openings in the stone walls, installing the new roof and finishing all the groundwork, they are now getting ready to repoint the interior of the freshly cleaned stone walls with lime mortar.

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We are now finalising the detailed drawings for the internal timber structure while they manage the site themselves and do the hands-on building under their own steam. We are following their progress through their personal blog dedicated to the project.

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