Building the 'micro-generation'
The architect behind an innovative 'carbon neutral' housing and work space development in the UK believes that the green technologies and principles on which it is based are ready for wide-scale deployment. There are numerous small scale examples of sound ecological practices being applied to buildings and construction, but as far as Bill Dunster, the architect who jointly developed the concept, is aware, the BedZed (Beddington Zero Energy Development) scheme is the first to incorporate environmentally-friendly practices into every aspect of its design. Speaking to CORDIS News before presenting the BedZed project at a 'Café Scientifique' organised by the British Council in Brussels on 2 March, Mr Dunster said that it was the first time that such technologies have been widely applied in an area of high population density. With a concentration of 120 people per hectare, it is practically the equivalent of building an eco-community in the heart of the city. BedZed is located around 20 miles from London, in one of the more deprived areas in the region. It consists of 100 households, each with their own garden, as well as recreational space, a workspace for everyone, childcare facilities, a green transportation network, and even a bar. And while many of the current residents have moved there to buy into the green lifestyle, you do not have to be a 'greenie' to live there. A third of the homes are for private sale, with a further third available for shared ownership, while the remaining units are social rent properties, designed to provide affordable accommodation to those citizens that cannot afford their own home. 'There are people from all different walks of live living there,' Mr Dunster's wife Sue explained, from eco-warriors to firemen and other key workers. 'You don't have to buy into the lifestyle to live there - you could know nothing about recycling and move into a BedZed home.' Once there, however, most people will naturally develop a deeper understanding of sustainability issues as their day-to-day experiences help to demystify them, she adds. It is undoubtedly one of the project's key strengths that first and foremost it aims simply to meet and even exceed people's desires for comfortable and practical housing, and the environmental benefits are a welcome bonus. 'It has an enormous sense of community,' says Mrs Dunster. The idea behind the development was the concept of 'powerdown', explained Mr Dunster, which involves eliminating the use of fossil fuels without reducing, and hopefully even enhancing, residents' quality of life. 'You can be as normal in your habits as you would anywhere else - it's just that when you switch on a light it will be a low-energy one, and the electricity powering will have been developed on site,' said Mr Dunster. All of the homes are glass-fronted, south facing and super-insulated, so that they can make maximum use of solar energy, stay warm using the heat of the sun, and keep heat-loss to an absolute minimum. The work units, meanwhile, all face north to reduce the need for air conditioning systems in the summer months. What little extra heating the homes do require is supplied by a centralised woodchip fuelled combined heat and power (CHP) unit, which generates carbon-free electricity from local tree waste. The community even has its own waste water treatment facility, which Mr Dunster would like to see managed by the residents themselves, although national and EU regulations have made this problematic. 'All of this technology can work; it just needs to be dumbed down to allow real community participation. We want to have local maintenance rather than having to rely on utility companies,' he says, but adds that these companies are less than enthusiastic at the idea that their services may no longer be required. Other energy saving measures within the scheme include a carpool system, with a number of the vehicles running on locally generated electricity, and schemes with nearby zero energy farms to supply the community with locally grown food. 'All of the technology used in BedZed is ready for the market, perhaps with the exception of the woodchip CHP unit where the efficiency could be better,' argues Mr Dunster. The real problem, as with many new technologies, is that people are put off by the expense, but the only way that the cost will fall is if more people buy them. 'It's a catch 22 situation,' he admits. However, as part of its 'sustainable communities' strategy, the UK government is committed to promoting more sustainable, high quality building design and construction in order to reduce waste and improve resource efficiency. The government predicts that some 3.8 million new houses will be needed in England alone by 2021 to meet current demand. While the BedZed development does cost more than a conventional construction scheme of a similar size, this is essentially because it is a prototype model, according to Mr Dunster. According to his own 'roadmap', the economies of scale needed to reduce costs to those of conventional volume housing are actually surprisingly small - in the order of some 5,000 homes a year. This equates to around 3 per cent of the government's projected 160,000 new homes that will be built in England each year. However, Mr Dunster is not optimistic that this opportunity to fundamentally rethink housing design and create a new supply chain for environmental technologies will be taken. 'The biggest problem is that the BedZed project is seen as an embarrassment by the UK government, as it goes far beyond the environmental standards that it has set for the development of these new homes. [...] That's the tragedy, that despite this massive building programme, there simply isn't the necessary awareness of the climate change problem and the available solutions.' There has been more interest in the scheme from continental Europe, he says, from countries such as Germany, Austria and Belgium, while a similar development is to be built in China, outside Beijing. Mr Dunster blames much of the opposition in his own country on the very British 'fear of the new'. The radically different look of the development has met with fierce opposition from traditional architects, for example. 'But aesthetics were carefully considered in the design - we are trying to create a new form of aesthetics that celebrates the environmental movement. [...] We are the first 'micro-generation', the first culture with the ability to address some of the problems that we have been left with.' The BedZed project's brave new aesthetic, he hopes, could be the shape of the future.
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United Kingdom