Architype

Following the dropping of the Code for Sustainable homes I am greatly encouraged to observe an ever increasing understanding of the importance of a ‘fabric first’ approach to building design.

This was evident in the holding of a one day conference at the NEC in Birmingham called  the ‘Fabric First Event – showcasing the delivery of energy efficient buildings’ http://fabricfirstevent.co.uk/

The morning featured a number of interesting presentations  including Ross Holleron from the Zero Carbon Hub, who talked about the importance of getting energy efficiency right in order to close the gap between design and as-built performance and Elizabeth Ness from Crest Nicholson who shared the learning of the AIMC4 project by a group of housing developers.

The conference focused on Passivhaus with Mark Bradbury of Climate Energy Homes, who illustrated the scheme of 51 Passivhaus houses currently under construction in Rainham, East London; Ben Shuster from Willmott Dixon who presented the University of Leicester Medical Building which is the largest Passivhaus building currently under construction in the UK, and Helen Brown of Encraft who argued that Passivhaus is the ‘De Facto fabric first approach.

A range of product manufacturers traded their wares in the foyer exhibition, and I was pleased to see so much focus on the importance of using the right products, in the right detailing and construction to achieve efficient fabric.

I presented our scheme of 150 rural Passivhaus houses at Kingstone, in Herefordshire. Frustrated with the lack of interest by local housing developers in design quality or sustainability, I formed a new new company, called ArchiHaus (www.archihaus.co.uk) , in partnership with a retired Swedish businessman, Lars Carlsson. Working with Architype we have set out to achieve high quality Passivhaus housing at the same price as standard developer housing.

To deliver this we have rethought the design of the house, the layout of the site, and the process of construction, from first principles, and come up with a radically new approach. Fundamental to our approach is the establishment of a local house factory on the model of Swedish house construction, to enable us to achieve a higher quality more efficiently.

We’ve obtained planning approval for our first scheme of 150 houses on a site, and are currently undertaking detailed technical development, and plan to be on site by the spring of 2015.