Maidenhill follows Newton Architects' ‘The Paise’, a country house with indoor swimming pool, in the North Pennines AONB. This is built and now monitored as carbon neutral.. Maidenhill, a 200sqm house, appears as though the ground has been peeled up, the building inserted and the roof laid back. The landscape dominates. It will perform to Passivhaus fabric standards and integrated from the start will be a battery module. This stores energy from the PV array for use into the evenings and for an electric car. It thus minimises demand and eliminates peaks, for energy from the grid. Brief Newton Architects were commissioned in 2014 by the client to design a house for his family with the aim to live more sustainably within the curtilage of his existing home a Farm. The client, a building contractor asked for the design to be an outstanding piece of architecture, the construction of which he would undertake himself. The house would be highly energy efficient and employ materials local to the area. The design would look to use these in a contemporary way. The design would offer an integrated approach to low energy living involving domestic, landscape and land management methods This scheme brings together a year of design development into a solution which we feel sits comfortably on the site, is understated, but cutting edge. It works with the contours of the site would dramatically improve the setting and approaches sustainability of the of the scheme in an innovative way building on our proven pedigree of delivering such buildings Design The Site offers level access onto an elevated plateau, before it slopes down to the south east. The site then levels out into a depression at the bottom before rising again. The aim of any design is to work with the landscape. Our previous experience of PARA 55 (PPS7 PARA11) had been on a site in the open Countryside in an AONB. The successful application there had looked for a solution that sat quietly in the landscape and did not look to detract from an already stunning landscape. Here the context is different. The site is in an area where urban meets rural. An area with a history of mineral extraction (mainly coal but also other minerals) Over time the area has healed from those scars but their influence is still evident. The context is pleasant if not spectacular in landscape terms. Our approach from the outset has therefore been to use any advantages offered by the site but also to look to enhance the setting to elevate the site from the ordinary, by enhancing biodiversity and bringing wildlife into the site. In some ways the proposal has to create its own context. In a small area create a concentrated micro environment. The landscaping of the site is as crucial as the architecture of the building. The design has developed over time but the idea of building as landscape and landscape as building has been maintained as a theme throughout. The initial response after discussions with the client had been to design a building that sat on the plateau at the top of the site. We examined various options for this, looking to maintain the views to the SW but without overlooking the neighbours. The solutions were never quite satisfactory so we moved on to look at a way of integrating any landscape solution into the building. This resulted in the terraced solution, set down the slope of the site. Again were were not wholly satisfied with this as the building had now become over complicated.