Pavilion

Isle of Wight, 2021
Architect: Niall McLaughlin Architects

Shortlist RIBA House of the Year 2023
RIBA National Award 2023
RIBA South Award 2023

A dining pavilion and out-house overlooking a tidal salt marsh in the north east of the Isle of Wight. The pavilion houses a long dining hall framed by three smaller spaces: a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom.

The buildings envelope, although extensively glazed, achieves a good level of thermal performance. The windows are triple glazed at 0.9W/m 2k, the opaque walls 0.13W/m2k and the floor and the roof 0.09W/m2k. A series of special thermal breaks were necessary to allow the glass walls to pass through the centre of each steel column, revealing the building skeleton to both the inside and the outside.

On the seaward side of the building the façade is made up of three 4.8m x 1.8m triple glazed guillotine windows. These windows drop down below floor level using motorised counterweights to open up the whole of the southeast side, allowing the interiors to become sheltered exterior space in warm weather.

In the summer, the building becomes a sheltered oudoor space and enables natural air flow across the width of the building. Background ventilation is provided by a bespoke trickle ventilator developed within the floor and controlled by sliding a portion of the timber floor joist to reveal a narrow air slot located under each finned tube heater. Air is drawn in through each ventilator from the void below the building.

The interior is flooded with natural light from all directions. The overhanging roof and louvred rooflights control direct solar radiation through the middle of the day.

The primary artificial lighting strategy for the main interior and exterior space uses indirect light by illuminating the main roof canopy to a relatively low value, less than 100lux. This involved many iterations of light modelling and luminaire testing and the result is a bespoke cylindrical spotlight developed in collaboration with Stoane Lighting. The arm of the luminaire is attached to a welded spigot at each of the steel columns and mirrored both inside and outside of the glazed facade. The luminiare was developed to integrate seamlessly with the steelwork and is the same diameter and finished in the same paint colour.

The wiring is concealed within within steelwork to each lumiaire. Drivers are all located in a single accessible location.

The kitchen, bedroom and bathroom are all illuminated using appropriatley sized recessed downlights all from the same family, integrated into ceilings and joinery. Luminaire drivers are fully accessible but concealed within ceiling or joinery zones. Lighting circuits are dimmable using retractive push buttons combined with Loxone and DALI control.

Significant effort went into the integration of the building services. The building is heated by air source heat pump housed in a remote enclosure located away from the building. The associated hydraulic interface, hot water tank, pumps and expansion vessels are housed in a bespoke copper clad cylinder located at the rear of the building.