Beyond Zero Carbon Housing

Yesterday the Nottingham Sustainable Building Research team held their second lively symposium moving from 'Towards Zero Carbon' in 2007 to Beyond Zero Carbon in 2012.  It should be no surprise that we know a lot more now than we did in those giddy days and it is not all good news.  Almost every speaker had tales of woe ranging from serious peformance gaps to profoundly depressing bodging and yet all were keen to build on this knowledge and press forward with designing good-live-in low energy housing even if much of it is nearer Code 4 than Zero Carbon.  Mentioning just some highlights of the day:

Richard Partington kicked us off with the development of ZC regulation and his heroic efforts to get that better, so that it is achievable and achieved.  He insisted we all read the excellent  report on the Leeds Met research into 2 pilot houses in his Temple Avenue Project for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which is  available on their website http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/temple-avenue-project-energy-efficient-homes

Alan Shingler described Shepherd Robson's journey from their £60k Prescott challenge house, through the Code 6 Lighthouse at BRE to their huge scheme, the first phase now built, at Barking Riverside - we must go all and see it. Alan made the essential case for the higher market value of these low energy homes although the valuers have yet to get it!

Former Cullinan year-out student Ben Hopkins and his two collagues described their heroic efforts to design and make the award-winning UK entry for the 2010 Solar Decathlon in Madrid; pre-assembling it in Nottingham, then moving it to Eco-build in London, then erecting it in Madrid in the wettest June in the pouring rain. And now it is nearly finished as the 6th house in the University's brilliant creative energy homes displaywww.nottinghamhouse.co.uk.

The charming Mario Cucinella talked about creative empathy (his train to Nottingham had caught fire and everyone had to climb out!) before discussing among other projects his delightful school in Gaza, about to start to site having been marked on GPS as 'not to be bombed'! Thisis onthe frontof his webste http://www.mcarchitects.it

Then Code 4 Green Street in the Meadows in Nottingham built after an invited competition, which we didnt win.  The local developer Blueprint (Igloo +) described the scheme by local architect Marsh Grochowski before PhD student David Bailey (sic) went on to describe his emerging findings having fallen on his feet; here was a scheme with one phase in timber frame and one masonry with wet plaster built next door to one another to the same spec with the same contractor - how rare is that!  Julian Marsh later described his really delicious 'holistic' house, office and vegetable garden nearby.

Bill Gething encouraged us to read his TSB Design for Future Climate report on adaptation and get ready to buy his new book but its not out till after Christmas.  CIBSE are shortly to launch UKCIP-made easy Pro-clip graphs; dont use current weather data as it is already out of date!  In answer to a question he reminded us that 'Team' GB put 25% of the CO2 up there so we had better get cracking and do something about it......

Fionn Stevenson reminded us of Gibson's theory of 'affordance (I was embarrassed that it was new to me but as in a chair affords sitting) and drew on her POE experience to insist we architects (and engineers) 'design for users'; we have loadsd of unhappy occupants of 'dumb' housing that oveheats, has poor cross-ventilation and very poor air quailty - DO BETTER fast!

As it turned out my slight anxiety about our not having built any ZC Housing didnt matter and a brief description of our carbon neutral garden city for 60,000 at Shahat in an area of high housing need in Libya coupled with a plea to direct our (and the students') attention to the existing stock seemed to strike a chord (forget HS2 and sort out out existing hsouing etc).

But that was not all as, after the symposium, we were whisked off to Brian Ford and Michael Stacey's new Energy Technologies Building to see their astonishing inaugural Prototyping Architecture Exhibition www.nottingham.ac.uk/abe. But us Londoners can see the exhibition, well it can only part of it, when it comes to the Building Centre in the New year - 11 Jan to 15 March. 

And then it was off to the centre of Nottingham to put the world to rights over a glass of red wine or two - we need to stay close to Nottingham.