32 PROJECT REPORT: LUXURY DEVELOPMENTS
“The biggest lesson from the project is that sustainability shouldn’t be viewed as an additional requirement or marketing feature,” Richards adds. “It should be embedded within the design process from the very beginning. When that’s the case, it improves every aspect of a development.”
LANDSCAPING AS ARCHITECTURE Richards explains that the landscaping of the development was another element “considered an integral part of the architecture” as opposed to an add-on. Given the site’s location within an AONB near the Ashdown Forest, the landscaping needed to “respect and enhance” the existing local ecology.
Native planting was used to not only support but strengthen biodiversity across the site. Each home has a private garden and its own allotment, and elsewhere a large balancing pond – formed from a World War II bomb crater – enhances the site’s “unique character and ecological value.” Removing some of the later agricultural buildings allowed for the original courtyard arrangement to be re-established. “Overall the landscape strategy reinforces the relationship between the homes and their setting, creating a development that feels embedded within the landscape rather than imposed upon it,” Richards says. Construction on the project progressed well, beginning in September 2022 and completing in April 2026. The challenges with this project were not with the construction itself, says Richards, but rather balancing the ambitious objectives with the “practical realities of construction and constraints of the existing planning consent.”
“Much of the learning centred around material selection, construction sequencing and ensuring that sustainability objectives
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were considered throughout the procurement as well as design,” he adds. “Meeting the RIBA Climate Challenge also required us to think beyond operational energy and consider the whole-life impact of every design decision.”
Collaboration was key to ensure the complex targets were met. But rather than viewing the challenges as ‘obstacles’, the team saw them as “opportunities to develop new knowledge that has informed subsequent products,” says Richards. The response to the project, says Richards, has been “extremely encouraging, generating signifi cant interest” not just from the public but also within the industry, particularly in regards to how it combines design quality with measurable environmental performance. “It demonstrates an alternative approach to rural housing, one that respects agricultural heritage without resorting to pastiche,” he explains.
“The forms and silhouettes of the original dairy buildings give the development a strong sense of place and a tangible connection to its past, while their contemporary reinterpretation provides buyers with homes that are future-ready, low carbon and uncompromising in terms of design quality,” he adds. It’s this absence of compromise that he believes has garnered the positive response – and that makes the whole project team immensely proud of what they’ve achieved.
The whole project team are immensely proud of what they’ve achieved with Hartdene Barns – and what it shows is doable. “The most rewarding outcome is that Hartdene Barns challenges the idea that sustainability and luxury are opposing ambitions,” Richards concludes. “I hope more developers will see projects like Hartdene Barns as evidence that sustainability and luxury are not opposing ambitions, but complementary ones.”
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