Can a home for a car collection positively reverse climate change?
Wolfgang has 10 cars and a bad habit of buying more whenever he sees one he likes. The Old Coal Yard project is a ‘Dream Garage’, a home and workshop for a classic car collector and his car collection. It is a highly sustainable garage and home 10 cars and 2 cats.
The site of the former coal yard is next to the railway line in the middle of Prey Heath. The Chase obtained permission on this greenbelt site after lengthy negotiation with the planners.
The brief is for building to create more energy than it uses. Effectively exporting energy back to the grid when it is in use. The building envelope is highly insulated and integrates solar panels and heat pumps, making the house ‘energy positive’. To achieve this all the roofs face south, optimising the solar roof tiles and having the added benefit of giving north facing roof windows for good natural daylight in the garage and workshop.
The palette of materials and the structure is a workshop inspired palette – an anthracite metal backdrop to show off the car collection with the same zinc metal cladding on the roof and the walls.
Trusses in the garage are tensioned in 3 directions to make a dynamic 3 dimensional trussed engineered aesthetic of the large span roof.
The development was featured on More 4's Impossible Builds (Episode 7).
