Studio Bloom | Architecture + Design

Hempcrete House | An Extension in Eastbourne

Hempcrete House is a very interesting experiment into the use of Hempcrete as a sustainable, breathable and natural material to use within an extension to an existing house in Eastbourne.

The original project brief was to rationalise the existing ground floor layout of Berni and Sue's newly purchased semi-detached house in Eastbourne to create a spacious open-plan kitchen-diner with a sitting area that looked out onto the garden. Though the couple were down-sizing, family get togethers with their children and grandchildren, along with daily life with their beloved dogs meant they required a usable space that had a good connection to the garden. Materials and finishes were very important to our Berni & Sue and they impressed from the beginning that they were interested in sustainable design and using natural materials.

The design developed over the course of a few months, with a solution presenting itself that fitted into permitted development guidelines. This enabled Berni & Sue to go ahead and build the extension without requiring planning permission - saving them both time and money.

The use of Hempcrete came about as Berni and Sue were busy renovating parts of the existing house, they uncovered the original plaster work and realised it was a lime based plaster. This lead them to consider continuing the use of lime plaster within the new extension after some research and many conversations over cups of coffee at Tunbridge Well's Trinity Theatre Cafe we came to the conclusion that Hempcrete would be an interesting and compatible material to use with the lime plaster.

Studio Bloom are working directly with Hempcrete UK to develop the details for the project, through a mixture of design workshops phone calls and emailed drawings. We look forward to brining further updates as this project goes on site.