Eco Home
About us
Building a piece of eco-architecture from the ground up is one of the many benefits of tackling a new home from scratch. At Scenario, we build all our new homes using eco-friendly construction practices, sustainable materials, eco-design and environmentally friendly technology for living a clean, low-carbon life.
But if you’re hiring an architect for a renovation or expansion of your existing home, we can seamlessly incorporate the latest sustainable technology to deliver an eco-house. All it takes is some creative thinking, good collaboration and a willingness to be open-minded. Fine-tuning an eco-house design with innovative materials and renewable energy can net immediate benefits, ranging from improved thermal wellbeing to reduced carbon footprint.
If you are one of millions of British homeowners eager to join the global shift towards sustainability, future-proofing your home is a wise move that will prove rewarding in the long term.
Your Eco Home project
We launched Scenario Architecture in 2007 with a vision to design functional, liveable spaces that look to the future while respecting the past. Our architects take a creative, considered approach to British architecture, incorporating eco-friendly materials and technology into our designs.
Our landmark project Scenario House demonstrates our commitment to smart, resourceful details that contribute to the environmental whole. In 2018 the light-filled East London Victorian conversion was shortlisted for several architecture prizes, including the prestigious RIBA London Awards.
Tip
Discover if your architect has had success steering planning applications through your local council. Visit the “planning applications” page of your council’s website and enter the architect’s name in the search criteria.
Scenario is an established architecture practice focusing on contemporary residential design. We take on projects of every scale and scope, from home refurbishment, renovation and expansions to new-builds.
Working with Scenario Architecture
Our dynamic studio designs modern, efficient homes in London and the southeast. We tackle projects of every scale and complexity, from interior renovations and single-storey extensions to lofts, basements and new-build eco-houses.
We collaborate closely with our clients from the initial concept through detail designs, planning, tender and construction and aim to complete all our projects on time and to budget, using the latest 3D design and visualisation technology is essential to our process. Our fluency with these home-building tools allows us to design precisely and sustainably. Building information modelling technology (BIM) saves time, energy and money, producing reliable construction information that renders accurate data on all our models.
This Chartered Institute of Building case study featuring one of our flagship projects demonstrates the benefits of advanced technology for modern house design.
Scenario is a RIBA Chartered Practice. We comply with the criteria of the Royal Institute of British Architects, covering insurance, health and safety and quality-management systems.
Eco Home
In our client's words
Eco Home
Great ideas and vision to help with our substantial improvement of a Victorian terrace. In our experience Scenario's method prioritises the final result. That may mean more professional fees or higher quotes from contractors, as they understand the exact requirements.
Eco Home
Great, professional service. Good drawings and models and ultimately passed planning at the first attempt with Hackney Council. Would certainly recommend!
Eco Home
Scenario Architecture have created an outstanding design and space that was beyond my expectations. The design was through their unique process of understanding the client’s daily scenarios and collaborating with the client to come up with a unique design. The design process is one of the most memorable parts of the process and they also stretched my existing ideas to help create this unique space. A stress free journey throughout the whole process which Scenario were indispensable by giving advice on many difficult design and build decisions.
Eco Home
We wanted to renovate our house in a conservation area in central London. Given this involved a complete demolition and new build with an extra floor on top, getting planning approval was always going to be tricky. Scenario did an amazing job on the new house 'envelope' and throughout the planning phase. We couldn't have wished for better from them and having succeeded in gaining planning approval owe them a very big 'thank you'.
Eco Home
Scenario were great at thinking imaginatively and coming up with a design for a ground floor extension that was more ambitous than other architects we spoke to. They also helped us find a contractor who was able to complete the project working within timescale and our tight budget. I would recommend for mid to large sized projects with sufficient budget to allow for full utilisation of their creativity.
Further Reading
As a society, we’ve never had better tools for living a sustainable life, and architecture is no exception to the current movement. As architects, whether we’re updating an old home or building anew, we have access to cutting-edge materials and techniques that reduce energy consumption and help our clients live a cleaner, less wasteful life. From solar panels to triple glazing, from renewable heating to reclaimed wood, our options have never been more plentiful.
With that in mind, we at Scenario have collaborated with a team of sustainability experts to create optional “tiers” for our clients on the ladder to total sustainability. Our offerings start with basic compliance with local environmental regulations and progress to top-of-the-line diamond certification. Each package improves on the last in terms of the tangible benefits. They offer sound-proofing, temperature control, renewable utilities and reduced overall carbon footprint. The higher the tier, the more you save on energy consumption and running costs into the future – and the quicker the return on your investment.
We’ve costed out these options and come to the figure of £2,000 to £3,000 per square metre for building a new home in or around London. This may sound like a wide range in costs, but establishing just a few basic details about a project can help narrow the gap.
Refining these initial estimates requires working out our construction methods, the structural approach, the quality of your fixtures and fittings, the level of sustainability you want and, importantly, the addition of a basement level – digging a full basement normally costs between £3,000 and £3,500 per square metre, before we introduce any sustainability measures.
A highly sustainable house will pay off in the long run, though it will demand a greater capital investment initially. Even with the growing availability of cost-effective measures, we’d budget between £2,500 and £3,000 per square metre, above ground, for a sustainable house. In order to finance your eco-architecture, we suggest you consider a self-build mortgage from an ecology building society.
Frequently Asked Questions
- As a dynamic practice operating in London’s premium residential market, managing projects remotely and conducting virtual meetings was a very familiar territory for us, long before the pandemic began and ‘working remotely’ became the norm.
- Our clients have very busy lifestyles and may move between several different locations, both within the UK and beyond, during the lifecycle of a typical project.
- To accommodate such client needs and enable us to run their projects smoothly we had all the technology and know-how associated with remote working in place for several years.
- Read our full (Virtual) Process
- Scenario based design – We start each and every project with a meticulous analysis of our client’s vision, requirements and aspirations. We do this by asking our clients to imagine their everyday scenarios living in the completed house and describe their desired interaction with it.
- Uniquely interactive - Our client’s deep involvement in the process does not stop with completion of the brief. Our design meetings are highly interactive, informal and fun.
- Designed to reflect you – Based purely on your lifestyle, aspirations and requirements and free from externally imposed concepts, metaphors and pre-conceptions, a completely fresh and unique design will gradually emerge and it will tell your story not ours.
- Collaborative – We start the conversation with planners early and advise most of our clients to seek pre-planning advice prior to submission of a full planning application. Our experience shows that when properly consulted and liaised with, most planning case officers will be receptive to conduct a professional dialogue, increasing chances of successes.
- Strategic – We tailor a custom planning strategy for each project based on its circumstances such as planning history, local context and specific challenging elements. We sometimes split applications or introduce minor tweaks to the scheme during the consideration period in conversation with the officers to prevent one contentious element from jeopardising approval of the main scheme.
- Professional – Our experience shows that the quality and clarity of the submission in terms of background research, planning history of the property and context, precedent and of course the arguments presented to support the case has a tremendous effect on success rate.
- The decision period clock only starts ticking once the application is validated by the Council, This requires then to check that the forms are completed correctly and that the submission contains all the necessary drawings, statements and reports.
- Although required by law to provide a decision within the statutory eight weeks period, it is not uncommon for councils to miss the deadline of the consideration period, normally only by a few days, sometimes longer.
- In some cases the council may ask us as your agent for an extension of time, this may be requested due to internal reasons or as an acceptable result of a professional discussion that we are conducting with them about certain aspects of the application that they are not sure about.
- Our experience shows that planning officers respond better to projects when they feel consulted and collaborated with. We find that when we truly listen to their often helpful and valid feedback and treat them as consultants for the projects and not representative of an evil enforcing authority, they tend to collaborate well with us and demonstrate increased flexibility.
- Although the council in theory have eight weeks to consider your application, in practice they are constantly overloaded. They will only look at your application in the last few days of the consideration period. If this is the first time that they come across a scheme that they were never consulted about, our chance to secure permission for you in a single attempt is significantly compromised.
- The standard practice is for the council to consider the full planning application as submitted and then issue a yes or no decision. Case officers are not required or even encouraged to enter a discussion with us or accept resubmission of minor changes to the proposed scheme during the consideration period.