Practice Architecture’s house is built from the plant growing in the fields around it.
Flat House, as the home on Margent Farm is called, is the conversion of a steel-framed agricultural shed, within which a new structure has been made of prefabricated timber-framed cassettes that were filled with a mulch of hemp, lime and water known as hempcrete. Once the mulch was dry they were erected into thick, highly insulating walls that also hold the building up. The exterior is covered in corrugated panels, which at first glance looks like the cement cladding typical of farm sheds. It is actually made of fibres from the outer coating of hemp stalks combined with resin taken from agricultural waste. It has a livelier texture and a more translucent quality than cement.
From Maui Surfer