© Rory Gardiner
- Architects: Mole Architects
- Location: 77 Lake Dr, Poole BH15 4LR, United Kingdom
- Area: 221.0 m2
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: Rory Gardiner
- Building Contractor : Frame: The Timber Frame Company – Will Bateman and Jim Blackburn
- Structural Engineer: Sinclair Johnston & Partners – Sinclair Johnston
- Cost Consultant: Orbell Associates – Tom Orbell
- Landscape Designer: Coe Design – Jenny Coe
- West Screen Joinery: Haroys – Jeff Haroy
- Architectural Metalwork: Fineline Fabrications – Mike Jupe and Andy Bailey
© Rory Gardiner
From the architect. Mole Architects was established by Meredith Bowles in 1996. It is a progressive and innovative award-winning architectural practice based in Cambridge.
© Rory Gardiner
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© Rory Gardiner
In 2004 the practice was awarded the RIBA Manser Medal for Meredith’s own home, Black House in Cambridgeshire. To date the practice has won 15 RIBA Awards for Design and Sustainability.
Mole produces modern designs that are appropriate to their local context, combining traditional materials and techniques with a more contemporary attitude to design and building. In addition to The Houseboat the practice has also recently completed Marsh Hill, a zinc-clad, low-rise new-build house in the marshlands of Suffolk.
© Rory Gardiner
The practice is a leader in sustainable building design. Projects such as Stackyard, Suffolk (2013), have been designed around Passivhaus principles. Earlier projects including Cavendish Avenue, Cambridge (2005), have been monitored post-occupation and proven to meet exacting Passivhaus standards.
In addition to self-build, one-off houses, the practice has designed institutional buildings such as the University of Cambridge undergraduate architecture school (2008), and housing developments such as Broadland Housing in Norfolk (2013). Mole is currently designing the first council-led co-housing scheme, K1 Co-housing in Orchard Park, Cambridge, and is one of ten firms to design Phase 1 of a £1 billion expansion in northwest Cambridge.
Mole also collaborates with other architects on large-scale projects. The practice is executive architect for Living Architecture, working on The Balancing Barn with Dutch practice MVRDV, and Dune House with Norwegian practice Jarmund Vigsnaes. Mole is currently working with Swiss architect and Pritzker Prize winner Peter Zumthor to deliver The Secular Retreat, his first permanent UK building.
Director Meredith Bowles was appointed Isaac Newton Design Fellow at the University of Cambridge in 2007.