Good morning.In the last few lectures I've beentalking about the history of domestic buildingconstruction.But today I want to begin looking atsome contemporary,experimental designs forhousing.So,I'm going to start with a house which isconstructed more or less under the ground.Andone of the interesting things about this project isthat the owners - both professionals but notarchitects - wanted to be closely involved,so theydecided to manage the project themselves.Their chief aim was to create somethere that was asenvironmentally-friendly as possible.But at the same time they wanted to live somewherepeaceful - they'd both grown up in a rural area and disliked urban life.
So the first thing they did was to look for a site.And they found a disused stone quarry in abeautiful area.The price was relatively low,and they liked the idea of recycling the land,as itwere.As it was,the quarry was an ugly blot on the landscape,and it wasn't productive anylonger,either.
They consulted various architects and looked at a number of designs before finally deciding onone.As I've said,it was a design for a sort of underground house,and it was built into the earthitself,with two storeys.The north,east and west sides were set in the earth,and only thesloping,south-facing side was exposed to light.That was made of a double layer of very strongglass.There were also photovoltaic tiles fixed to the top and bottom of this sloping wall.Theseare tiles that are designed to store energy from the sun.And the walls had a layer of foamaround them too,to increase the insulation.