The Concept
I dreamed for years of a cosy eco-house in a few acres of countryside but couldn't find a suitable site that someone was prepared to sell. When a tiny garden plot came up in Pembroke Dock where I was living I started to think - why not an urban eco-house?
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Housing in the U.K. is among the least energy efficient in Europe and if we're going to find a way of reducing the impact of our 26 million households it can't be just about one-off eco-houses in the country (lovely though they are) - we're going to have to think about an urban solution. By building near where existing services, jobs and transport are found, travel needs and emissions are reduced and we can start to tackle the problem on a meaningful scale. What I set my mind on was a low-impact, attractive home that would be cheap to build and cheap to run; merging something of the efficiency and simplicity of developer housing with the character and environmental performance of an eco-build.
Next - The Design >
I dreamed for years of a cosy eco-house in a few acres of countryside but couldn't find a suitable site that someone was prepared to sell. When a tiny garden plot came up in Pembroke Dock where I was living I started to think - why not an urban eco-house?
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Housing in the U.K. is among the least energy efficient in Europe and if we're going to find a way of reducing the impact of our 26 million households it can't be just about one-off eco-houses in the country (lovely though they are) - we're going to have to think about an urban solution. By building near where existing services, jobs and transport are found, travel needs and emissions are reduced and we can start to tackle the problem on a meaningful scale. What I set my mind on was a low-impact, attractive home that would be cheap to build and cheap to run; merging something of the efficiency and simplicity of developer housing with the character and environmental performance of an eco-build.
Next - The Design >
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