PHOTOGRAPHS
The Photographs included below are a representative sample of some of the design work undertaken by David Parratt for private clients.
House extension, LEEDS
The clients lived in a small two bedroomed end terrace house separated from the gable end of an adjoining larger terrace house by a passage little more than 1.0 m wide. With an addition to their family expected, they required more space.
Because the front door to the property was in the front elevation and led only to a small lobby at the foot of the staircase,all internal traffic had to be through the Living Room. The way to achieve their requirements was to make a new entrance to the property in the side passage so as to be able to turn the original front Lobby and staircase into an addition to the Living room and to build a rear extension containing an enlarged Kitchen and a Utility room with access to the garden.
The new main entrance led directly to a new staircase in the middle of the house thus allowing better and more economical access to a rearranged first floor.
HOUSE at ADEL, LEEDS
ThIs a four bedroomed detached house planned for an irregular shaped site on a plot situated behind a row of existing houses. With these houses acting as a shield from view from the main road, the house is situated at the north side of the site with a view of the principal garden on the south side.The principal room of the house is a large Living/Dining room with patio doors leading on to a garden terrace. There is also a separate Sitting Room which faces west to receive the evening sun, a large Entrance Hall and, facing the garden, a fully fitted Kitchen with a hatch to the dining end of the Living Room.
The house was designed to have, for its day, very high degree of insulation with ground floor walls constructed of two leaves of insulating concrete blocks finished externally with Tyrolean rendering. Internally, these walls are finished with foil-backed plasterboard dry-lining, thereby creating a second cavity to further improve the insulation.
The first floor external walls are formed with site-prefabricated timber panels filled with insulation, fitted with double glazed windows and clad externally with cedar boarding. The roof has timber trusses carrying a traditional roof covered with insulating boarding, felt, counter batons and large flat concrete “slates”. Wide overhanging eaves and verges contain concealed rainwater gutters feeding into internal rainwater pipes.
As the ground floor is larger than the first-floor, there are areas of flat roof which have insulated decking covered with a weatherproof membrane.
The house is heated by a ducted warm air plenum ventilation system with a conventional boiler feeding two heat exchangers.
FACTORY at NORMANTON, LEEDS
The original proposal was for the client to engage a surveyor to oversee the work of a design-and-build contractor for a factory on a site on a municipal trading estate which had a time limit for completion of building. Unfortunately, the contractor who was suggested by the local authority, proposed an expensive scheme which made no allowance in its price for the probable abnormal foundations and, due to its entrance being on a road junction could not possibly receive planning permission.
The answer was therefore was to prepare a new phased design and obtain competitive tenders which turned out to be well below the original design-and-build price, even after the addition of all professional fees. The scheme included a single-storey office block designed for later extension by the addition of a second floor. Despite the initial delay, this work was completed to budget and in time to meet the completion deadline.The photographs show the factory after the construction of the second floor.
House extension, YEADON, Near LEEDS
The Client had a bungalow with a large single-storey garage and workshop block, but needed more bedroom space. The answer was to build a second story to the garage block with the ridge kept as low as possible to avoid the extension having an overbearing effect on the original bungalow. The upward extension was entirely timber framed with a “folded-plate” roof using site-prepared prefabricated panels so that the structural cladding of the panels formed the basic ceiling finish with no structural members projecting into the usable space. The eaves space was used for storage cupboards and services.
New House ADEL, LEEDS
The Clients lived in a modern, four bedroomed, detached house with a very large garden mainly on the south side. They decided to have a new house built to their own requirements on this adjoining land. The original owners of the house who were very keen gardeners, had bought two plots and had developed them by building their house on one and using the second solely as a garden space. Because the house was orientated to provide a view of the garden, an outline planning application for a second house was refused because the existing house would directly overlook the private areas of the new one.
Further consideration of the design of the new house produced an L-shaped plan so that the projecting leg of the new house would shield its patio area from view and, by keeping this to a low profile, it would not become an obstruction to the daylight reaching the existing house. This solution to the problem was accepted on appeal.
The new house is timber framed with an external cladding of Yorkshire stone and areas of blue Welsh slate-hanging. Internally the Living Room varies in height from a traditional ceiling height at one end to a Gallery/Landing at the other and there is an open riser staircase enclosed in toughened glass walls.
The construction was completed to budget and the house received an award.