@alan fraser said:
And I absolutely loathe the practice of building modern estates of identical houses with windows, porches and conservatories which bear absolutely no relationship to the orientation of the house or the prevailing winds.
You are so right Alan. Even driving around the countryside here, one will notice that many of the older country houses from small labour's cottages up to large country estate houses were orientated for maximum solar gain .... then along came the Planning Act in 1960 (or there abouts) and regimented constructions to have standard set backs parallel to the public road.
Okay, its quite possible to design with these constraints but having the ability a 'skew' the house would make it a lot more efficient building π