It has been announced today that The Chestnut House, our Passivhaus designed in collaboration with the Prince's Foundation for Building Community, has been chosen as the winning pair of houses to be built at the BRE’s Watford Innovation Park. The Scottish based PassivCollective’s Passivhaus design has been chosen for the BRE’s Ravenscraig site in Scotland.
The Watford brief was to design a semi-detached residential Passivhaus where one dwelling is to be allocated for social housing and one for mid-range market housing. The Ravenscraig brief was to design a detached residential Passivhaus to achieve Code for Sustainable Homes Level 6.
Justin says: “We are absolutely thrilled to be given the opportunity of building on previous work and creating something truly outstanding at Watford that will act as a realistic signpost for the future. The team has worked hard to develop a beautifully proportioned, truly low cost and convincing design for RSLs, developers and the general public to adopt. Collaborating with the BRE on the latest addition to the Watford Innovation Park is an opportunity to be cherished, and we believe that Chestnut House will be a very special building.”
“The competition brief was extremely demanding, and will have pushed all the teams to learn more about life cycle analysis, maintenance intervals, and design for climate change. We look forward to seeing a proliferation of Passivhaus social housing prototypes emerging from this competition and the housing industry being strengthened as a result.”
For further information visit the BRE Website http://www.bre.co.uk/news/Winners-of-Passivhaus-competition-announced-782.html and our blog at http://bere.co.uk/blog/berearchitects-shortlisted-bre-uk-passivhaus-competition-both-watford-and-ravenscraig-sites
The RIBA Blogs, Passivhaus and the Prince’s House debate Issue 1, 2 and 3 can be found at the following links:
http://RIBA Blog - Fabric First: Passivhaus and Prince's House debate Issue 1
http://RIBA Blog - Sustainable Production: Passivhaus and Prince's House debate Issue 2
http://RIBA Blog - Beauty Matters: Passivhaus and Prince's House debate Issue 3