THE LAST WORD
The last WORD
Dwelle by Ric Frankland which featured at last year's Greenbuild Expo.
It’s not easy being green Lucy Young explains the trouble with sustainable housing, and how to begin solving it
The performance of eco houses in use is one of the biggest challenges facing the housing industry. We’ve all heard stories about sustainable homes that were amazing at the design stage, but didn’t live up to the hype in reality, and this can only be bad for the industry.
bad publicity of supposedly eco buildings that disappoint their residents. If an eco buyer expects to have energy bills of just £200 a year but is seeing much higher demands then something has clearly gone wrong between the design stage and the post- construction occupancy. As our interest in monitoring performance has
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Lucy Young of Greenbuild Expo and the Greenbuild Awards
grown, so has the amount of under-achieving homes. But the properties in question are rarely named and shamed. This could be because the industry doesn’t want to damage the reputation of sustainability in the eyes of the house-buying public. Or, it could be because, traditionally, once a house is built and sold, the architect or developer doesn’t have anything to do with the finished product. Or, it could be because we don’t know all the reasons why houses aren’t living up to the performance predicted at the design stage. But we won’t start to close the gap between design and in-use performance until we recognise the problem exists. The difference between design aspirations and
actual performance can be immense, as can be seen on the CarbonBuzz website. This platform from RIBA and CIBSE, run by Aedas, aims to highlight
t’s crucial that we raise public awareness of the benefits of low-energy and sustainable housing, but any gains made will be overturned by the
building performance by collecting data from different types of buildings and allowing users to make comparisons. Crucially, anyone uploading project data can do so anonymously – ideal if you’d rather not advertise a failing project – for the greater good of the industry. An increase in the monitoring of buildings in use – and information sharing – is key to our understanding of sustainable buildings. CarbonBuzz isn’t the only initiative to have
spotted the need for action on this. The Technology Strategy Board is currently running its Building Performance Evaluation competition, which involves a projects monitoring buildings in use and analysing what influences the performance, with the aim of helping developers deliver better buildings in the future. According to the TSB, the discrepancies between design and in-use performance exist for a number of reasons, including the type of design or modelling software used and the build process, which might not follow the plan initially set out. A further reason given is the motivation of the occupants, which is easy to understand if you’ve witnessed someone opening all their windows to let in fresh air in the middle of winter, with the central heating and log burner on full blast. Given the huge role that occupant behaviour
can play on a building’s performance, should we be trying to influence behaviour to encourage energy- saving lifestyles? Or should we be designing buildings that need minimal human input to be sustainable? A combination of the two would surely be the best outcome. The Greenbuild awards have been launched to celebrate sustainable buildings in use. For details on how to enter visit
www.greenbuildawards.co.uk.
ArchitectNews.co.uk | Architects Choice | 45
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