Homes fit for zeros

New property partnership turns eco-lifestyles into reality

It’s ‘One Planet Living’ made flesh. Building work starts in January on two flagship housing schemes, designed to prove that we in the rich world can live lightly enough to stay within the limits of planet Earth, rather than consuming resources as if we had two more planets to draw on.

It was WWF and BioRegional Development Group who developed the OPL concept, and Bioregional has now formed a partnership with property company Quintain to translate it into homes in Brighton and Middlesbrough.

Crest Nicholson will handle construction at the 172-home Brighton site, with recycled concrete, natural clay, newspaper insulation, rainwater harvesting… you name it, it’s in the plans. There’ll ‘zero-carbon’ energy upfront, with eight mini-wind turbines on the roof to power the ventilation system, as well as backstage, with a woodchip boiler doing hot the water and space heating. Under the radar, any bought-in electricity will be from renewable sources too.

“The lifestyle of the occupants is the critical factor,” says Quintain’s Nick Shattock. The development is “essentially car-free”, with 153 cycle spaces, and parking for just 12 cars - reserved for disabled users and members of the onsite car club. BioRegional’s Pooran Desai says it is features like these that take it further than his group’s celebrated BedZED: “This time we’re doing as much on estate management as we are on design.” The site will eventually be run by a community trust, and a ‘green caretaker’ will advise residents on composting and recycling, and using the rooftop mini-allotments.

Even wackier-looking housing is planned for Middlesbrough - a site chosen not only to help “reinvent” the town, says Desai, but precisely because its former industrial nature “makes it an exciting place with a lot of intellectual capital”. He’s hedging his bets that the new hydrogen economy will emerge there - and hopes to include some form of H in ‘Middlehaven’ in the future.

These first properties are really “a test-bed of ideas”, says a realistic Shattock, which will help “sort those initiatives which offer real payback from those which verge on the totemic.” - Hannah Bullock

10 October 2006

Hannah Bullock