Cogan Terrace, Cardiff
14-16 Cogan Terrace is in Cathays, a predominantly student area adjacent to the Cardiff University Students Union. Two adjacent dilapidated terraced houses were both owned by landlord/developer/tech-entrepreneur Joe Miles, who had got me the Harbour View job. The houses required such a lot of work to bring them to a good habitable standard that I was commissioned to suggest options for a new-build scheme. The eventual building retained a division into 2 units, each with three flats totalling 12 bedrooms. Each flat has its own private open space. The visual rhythm of the terrace is preserved to the front and rear, with everything in-between being of new conception and construction.
The building is environmentally monitored and automatically ventilated. Joe Miles’s Atamate Building Management System uses a sensor network to monitor air-quality and control the indoor environment. Ecocent heat-pump hot-water cylinders depressurise the airtight building by extracting air from the wet-rooms; fresh air is introduced though direct wall-vents, which open and close automatically, and on-demand. Heat extracted from stale air is stored in the domestic hot water cylinder by the Ecocent heat-pump. The Atamate system also uses the many rooflights to ventilate the building from the ground floor, to the roof.
The completed building on Cogan Terrace is shown in this picture as seen from 128 Miskin Street, a formerly derelict house now also renovated to my design.
The existing houses were utterly razed.
The building implements vapour-open construction, with mostly natural materials. Built of Durisol lime/woodchip blocks, with Lewis-deck composite flooring, and I-joist floor and roof structures.
The roof covering is of Steico woodfibre insulation with Intello membranes.
Despite the deep floorplan, every room has direct sky lighting and natural ventilation.
Novel layout ideas are used throughout.
Sight-lines are emphasised to give a feeling of space.
Even the fully-internal ground-floor kitchens have natural light and fresh air.
Triple-glazed Velfac windows with low emissivity glass improve energy and noise performance.
Cogan Terrace has been studied several times in University research. It has shown to have better than Passivhaus levels of energy consumption: just 12kWh/M²a.
Ty Mawr ‘Glaster’ was used to render the walls. Giving rise to the nicknames tikka & masala, Welsh-produced lime render contains a ground-glass aggregate that gives a shimmering effect. The lime product is fully breathable.
I used the design work to qualify as a Chartered Architectural Technologist. The building was a finalist for the prize for Excellence in Architectural Technology (medium projects) in the 2021 AT Awards.