Planning, design and construction services for developers, self-builders and homeowners
Figura
Planning, design and construction
21st Century housing
Sustainable living in the 21st Century.
This house is designed for minimal energy use and zero external maintenance.
The all-electric house has no fossil fuel connections. It has a built-in high thermal capacity to even out the vagaries of the English weather.
The extremely high levels of insulation, combined with underfloor heating and a ground-source heat pump generated a heating bill of only £300 over its 1st winter.
The recycled zinc roof and cedar cladding require no maintenance. They are designed to blend in with the neighbouring buildings, while giving that contemporary look, currently “in-Vogue”.
Cooke House
This house was designed for clients in the grounds of a listed building.
Figura designed the house to respect its historic neighbour while providing the contemporary living environment requested by the clients.
The timber famed structure is a hybrid of stressed-skin panels, heavy timber posts, beams & trusses.
This very strong structure has allowed us to provide large areas of glazing and vertical spaces within the house.
Contemporary features, such as roof glazing are integrated into the structure by breaking the roof plane.
The exterior is maintenance-free. Western Red Cedar boarding will weather naturally over time, helping the house blend into its surroundings.
The Interior
The interior has open plan multi-use spaces, all with natural light, views in several directions and cross ventilation.
Natural finishes have been used wherever possible to create a healthy living environment.
All service runs are enclosed in accessible ducts to reduce maintenance costs.
Passive solar is combined with underfloor heating to minimise running costs.
Figura used its experience as a speculative developer to keep the cost of this individually designed house within reasonable limits.
Figura has designed this house to combine all the features demanded by contemporary living in a home, which respects its neighbours and sits comfortably in its surroundings.
Hawthorne Way
Figura designed this house and built the weathertight shell for self-builders, who finished the interior themselves.
The design was accomplished after rejection of the homeowner’s own applications, to accommodate the wishes of the local planning officers. The design is the 1st contemporary building on this street. It is intended to fit with the 2-storey building on its left and the bungalow on its right. It replaces an original bungalow, which had subsidence problems.
The site faces South, so the living areas, on the garden side have limited sunlight. Figura used large areas of roof glazing to allow the sun to penetrate right through the building into the main living area. The building is lightweight and built on a raft foundation to get around the problems of poor ground. The exterior materials are long lasting and require zero maintenance.
Repton House
This modern vernacular house was built for clients in Grade 1 listed grounds laid out by Humphrey Repton. The house was designed with the support of the local authority planners and conservation officers. It won a Conservation Award for the design and for the construction.
The house and its foundations were completely prefabricated off-site. Consequently, the time to erect the house on-site and disruption of the landscape were minimal. The landscape was handed back to the client after only 2 weeks of construction.
The structural design mimics medieval timber frame construction, but is totally prefabricated, including all beams, joists and dragon beams. The latter provide the means of cantilevering the building in 2 directions at once. This, in combination with structural mullion windows, allows the windows to run right around the corners of the house, creating rooms with extraordinary natural light.
Rich interiors
Figura creates rich living environments at a reasonable cost. We do this by systematising the production and by
prefabricating and prefinishing in workshops. We can produce the character of hand-made work at a fraction of the cost.
Houses for development
Figura itself built these new houses speculatively in different parts of the world. Each was built using a system of prefabricated parts for fast erection and to provide quality finishes at minimal cost. They were very popular.
These designs are suitable for situations where there is some historical context. They use the proportions of vernacular buildings, while providing modern living environments for today’s discerning clients.
Figura designs contemporary houses for situations where cutting edge development is more appropriate. Figura also designs houses for other developers. We bring our experience and our building systems to the project.