Posi-Joists from Palgrave Brown have featured on Channel 4’s Grand Designs TV show in a £725,000 project in Bristol known as the Sugar Cube house.

Martin Pease, a commercial architect, designed his ‘sugar cube’ open plan dream home for his wife Katherine, two children and two dogs, with everything in white. The steel and timber frame project was completed on budget – land costs of £425,000 and build costs of  £350,000 – and with a rapid build time of just under a month.

Unusually, due to the nature of the design, Posi-Joists were incorporated placed vertically as well as horizontally for the floor and roof support and Palgrave Brown designers assisted with the design and unusual application of the Posi-Joists.

Dave Atkins, product manager for Posi-Joist at Palgrave Brown, said: “The Sugar Cube is a great project to demonstrate the product’s versatility, and we are delighted that Palgrave Brown’s design service was able to give the customer the design flexibility he wanted.”

Exeter-based Westructure Timber Frame used Martin’s ideas and design to produce detailed drawings and a CAD 3D image to take in the structural, environmental and conceptual requirements and specified Posi-Joists. Peter Doman, managing director at Westructure, explained: “This was the first time we’d used Posi-Joists in vertical alignment. It meant we could have large ceilinged rooms as well as fulfil Martin’s vision of wide open spaces.” 

The highly-insulated Sugar Cube four-bedroomed home is virtually all open plan, and half the ground floor space has double height ceilings. To add to the light and spacious feel, the house also features a full height glass wall overlooking the garden.

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