Studio Values

Hawkes Architecture’s Crossway Passive House was a pioneering Passive House which pushed boundaries. In collaboration with Cambridge University, an extensive array of monitoring & focussed studies have been and continue to be undertaken to test, examine & learn from this exemplary project.

This unique insight into the construction and energy footprint of the country’s first certified Passive House has provided an invaluable knowledge base from which the practice has been able to apply & evolve to each and every project since. Among these early studies was a detailed study into the embodied energy expended in the creation of Crossway. This included not only an assessment of the embodied energy of all materials used but also the energy associated with transportation, including getting materials and the construction team to and from site. This study proved extremely informative and helped the practice to evolve its already exceptional environmental construction philosophy.

What we have learnt from the average UK house, is that there is a need for new dwellings to be built better and use less energy. On all our projects we rigorously follow the principals of fabric first design, minimising the amount of energy that a building requires throughout the seasonal changes.

Every Hawkes house is built with highly insulated foundations, breathable timber frames and triple or even quadruple glazed windows. Plus we ensure our dwellings are air tight and use mechanical heat ventilation systems to eliminate draughts within our buildings.