Achieving Passivhaus in Community-Led Affordable Housing
As you may have learned from our previous few blog posts, Passivhaus is a certification that requires the prospective building to achieve exceptionally high energy efficiency. Meeting this criteria requires both outstanding design and construction quality which is highly demanding for even the most experienced architects and contractors.
So, how can these standards of excellence be achieved by a community with limited resources and construction knowledge?
A sketch overview of the proposed project
Here’s the story so far for Lancaster Gardens, a Passivhaus, community-led affordable housing project in Whitleigh, Plymouth.
In 2019, we started working with the Whitleigh Community Trust, to deliver 10 new-build affordable homes. The Trust was formed in 2018 with the backing of Whitleigh Big Local. Big Local is a national lottery funded programme in which 150 communities in England were each given £1m to use over a ten-year period, and low cost housing for local people was identified as a local priority.
We got to work constructing a 1:200 scale topographical site model to explore ideas in community consultations which residents to interrogate many of the significant issues pertinent to the area. The community consultation sessions gave us invaluable insight from the Whitleigh community, and discussions continued until planning was achieved in late 2022.
Since then, the Four Greens Community Trust has been strategising how this build might be delivered. Most recently, WikiHouse has become the prevalent strategy to enable the community to get involved with the construction of this project.
Image credit: WikiHouse
Image credit: WikiHouse
WikiHouse describes itself as an open, modular building system that makes it simple for anyone to make beautiful, high-performance, zero carbon homes. Like LEGO, but for real buildings!
The blocks are typically insulated and assembled from CNC-milled parts off-site; a warehouse or barn near to the site could temporarily serve as a community factory hub. This could create opportunities for the community to directly contribute to the production of their own homes and neighbourhood, putting in ‘sweat equity’ while also gaining valuable skills and knowledge.
We’re excited to see the next stages of this project and know that a well thought out system, specialised to fulfil the community’s design requirements, led by experienced project managers and designers, will enable a neighbourhood workforce to successfully deliver this inspirational, affordable, community-led, Passivhaus project.
If you’re a part of a neighbourhood in Devon, Bristol, the South West, or anywhere else in the country, and you’re looking to support your locality with a housing or community project, feel free to drop an email to info@barefootarchitects.co.uk or call 0117 907 0971 to find out how our experienced team might be able to work alongside you to deliver your next project.
by Will Allen