[7] 14 lessons from a city straw-bale house

Location

London

Build Start

~1998

Architect

Jeremy Till, Sarah Wigglesworth

Total Floor Area

588 m²

[Source: Estimate ]

Site Purchase Price

£ 343800

Site Area

794m²

Site Cost Per m²

£ 433

Initial Budget

£ 1833300

Total Spend

£ 1947900

Budget Overspend

6.25%

Cost Per m²

£ 3313

Site Coverage

34.08%

Plot Ratio

74.09%

All Figures Indexed To

02 May 2025

Construction Type

Gabion, Steel Frame, Timber Frame

Materials

Natural, Steel, Straw, Wood

Features

If you’d like to understand the Philosophy behind these Grand Reviews you can read it here. Case Study Snapshot In the late 1990s, architects Sarah Wigglesworth and Jeremy Till transformed a disused Islington workshop into a large live–work home right beside a mainline railway. The house combined experimental systems: straw-bale walls for the bedroom wing, […]

Become a (free) member to keep reading

This post is free to read but only available to members. Join today to get access to all posts.

Already a member? Log in

Acknowledgment:

This is a non-commercial review carried out for the purposes of study in developing an understanding of the requirements of self-build in the UK.

The views and opinions expressed are my own and is not affiliated in any way with Grand Designs or Channel 4. All information on this page has been gathered from publicly available sources.

The plot/site information was located using Land Registry and The Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities Data which contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

The lessons learned are derived from my interpretations and observations of a publicly disseminated case study and are in no way meant to be a substitute to the original.

Click here to view the original case study on the Channel 4 website.