Houses resembling the burrows of the Lord of the Rings heroes in the fairytale village of Hobbiton are being built today and in real life. Usually they are located on the slopes of small hills, and only their windows and entrance are visible from the outside, as a rule, facing south. The earth in such a house serves as a "blanket" that protects it from cold, rain, wind and natural wear and tear.
House-"dugouts" in Switzerland
Vetsch Architektur
The settlement of houses-holes was built in the Swiss Alps, in the city of Dietikon. The author of the project is architect Peter Vech, head of the Swiss bureau Vetsch Architektur, a supporter of "green" construction. He calls such buildings “inhabited sculpture”.
Almost completely buried in the ground, the houses are located around a small pond, and the entrance to this complex from the outside is not easy to see. The area of each of the nine houses ranges from 60 to 200 m2. Premises, where residents are mainly at night, are located in the northern parts of the houses, and the "day" rooms are facing south. In the center are the bathrooms and stairs to the basement, with all the bathrooms illuminated by sunlight coming through the skylights.
The walls and roof are made of shotcrete. On top of it are laid a heat-insulating layer of foamed recycled glass 25 cm thick, a polymer-bitumen vapor barrier, resistant to plant roots, geotextile and soil taken from the building spot.
Villa Waltz
SeA R CH & CMA
Villa Vals was built in the Alps, in the Swiss city of Vals, according to the project of the Dutch bureau SeARCH in cooperation with CMA (Rotterdam - Zurich). Local materials were used for its construction - for example, the local Waltz quartzite was used for the facade. During the construction of the villa, it was necessary to go 15 meters deep into the thickness of the hill, so the retaining wall is made of very strong reinforced cast concrete. The entrance to the house is a 2-level "gatehouse" made of stone and wood - it is connected to the main house by a 28-meter concrete tunnel.
In the plan, the house is a rectangle with an ellipse of a terrace with a spring and a jacuzzi cut into it. The terrace is "wrapped around" by a ring-shaped facade with windows of different scales at different heights, reflecting the complex arrangement of the internal premises (at different levels), in a section resembling a puzzle. On the ground floor there is a kitchen with a dining room, a living room and a bedroom with a library. One and a half upper levels accommodate three bedrooms with bathrooms.
Malator House in Wales
Future Systems
The villa received the nickname "House of the Teletubbies" for its resemblance to the home of cartoon characters. It is almost completely hidden underground - with the exception of two glazed facades, one of which faces the sea. Its landscaped roof merges with the surrounding natural landscape. The plan of the house is made in the form of a horn and is divided into three zones: the space for daytime stay is located in the center, and on the sides there are bedrooms with bathrooms. Thanks to high-quality thermal insulation and a high level of thermal inertia (the ability of fences to maintain a relatively constant temperature of the inner surface with periodic changes in the outside temperature), combined with radiant heating, which consumes the heat of the exhaust ventilation air, this house requires very little energy for heating.
*** Bolton Eco House
Make Architects
The owner of the future home, the famous football player Gary Neville, was interested in preserving its natural surroundings, therefore this one-storey house with an area of 920 m22 with four bedrooms, it was planned to carefully fit into the slope of the hill, and its roof - to be greened. The house was conceived as an environmentally friendly building with zero CO emissions2… The project included a heat pump, solar panels and wind turbines.
*** One can argue about the necessity and rationality of such housing, but the famous film adaptation gave a new impetus to the trend - the construction of both fabulous and modern housing in the form of burrow houses, covered with earth. Probably, they are so good that they allow you to retire, while being in a comfortable environment.
Representative office of Tsinko RUS on Archi.ru
