proyectos

Old Holloway Passivhaus

England

Old Holloway is a single-storey detached house in rural Herefordshire (England), self-built by architect Juraj Mikurcik and completed in 2017. It was the first project in the UK to use the EcoCocon system: prefabricated timber-frame panels filled with compacted straw, a Passivhaus-certified component, complemented externally with wood-fibre insulation. Prefabrication sped up the build: the external walls were erected in three days and the house was watertight within four weeks. The building was constructed using materials with low embodied energy (timber, straw, recycled cellulose and clay), with a simple gable-roofed volume and a south-facing porch in keeping with the local vernacular architecture. Passivhaus-certified, several years of monitoring confirm an average heating demand of around 12 kWh/m² per year. It won the UK Passivhaus Trust award for small projects in 2018 and stands as a benchmark for cost-effective, bio-based Passivhaus design.