Well-heeled consumers will never find it hard to splash out on sustainable mod-cons, but is concept truly scaleable?
The eco home that Max O'Flaherty designed – which won his firm a coveted EU award at the Royal Institute of British Architects annual awards last month – nearly didn't get built at all.
The House on Mount Anville, which put his practice, Aughey O'Flaherty, in the same bracket as star architects such as Zaha Hadid, was almost denied planning permission on the grounds that it would not have been sustainable to knock down its precursor: a 1970s bungalow.
"It was a leaky, drafty, poorly insulated house and there wasn't much architectural merit," says O'Flaherty. Thankfully, he and his team were able to demonstrate to the council that replacing it with a new glass, brick and timber structure which would be far more energy efficient.
In his design, super insulation, an airtight frame and triple-glazed windows are employed to maximise solar gain and reduce CO2 emissions. "We could show that, very quickly – after year four or five – that there would be a net gain; that it would be more sustainable compared to the old house, and even a refurbished house."
*Slow progress*
For O'Flaherty, it is "infuriating" that more houses are not built to greener standards. Homes can be fitted with photovoltaic panels, geothermal collectors and other hyper-efficient systems and sensors that adjust to minute changes in humidity or temperature, but sometimes "first principles", such as using simple materials and positioning a building so that rooms follow the path of the sun, are all you need, he says.
O'Flaherty added: "The construction industry is a very slow industry to change. If you are a house builder you want the lowest common denominator. You want the cheapest way from A to Z and you go with the norm.
"If you've got 100 houses and 95% are built in the traditional way and 5% in a more proactive way, it needs to be a particular consumer to go for the 5% – early adopters, forward-thinking people."
*Non-conventional solutions*
O'Flaherty's response has been, rather cannily, to begin offering buyers an off-the-shelf eco home for a couple of hundred thousand euros. It involves modular timber frame with thick thermal insulation, giving it an impressive BER A1 rating. It's early days, but it's a concept which has been successfully scaled up in some parts of Europe, and which he thinks could attract environmentally conscious consumers closer to home.
Germany is one country where this kit eco house concept has blossomed, growing from a cottage industry into a major sector. WeberHaus, for instance, has built around 20,000 energy efficient "preconfigurated" houses across Europe since 1990, such as Passive Houses, a type of ultra-low energy home.
A WeberHaus home can be built for about €200,000, says Holger Heid, the company's product manager. "If you compare the fuel, gas, electricity and other energy bills of a WeberHaus with a city flat, you can with our house easily [save] a quarter or fifth."
The market in Germany is however buoyed by a regulatory environment, which heightens the attractiveness of eco homes. "It depends a lot on the national building regulation," says Heid. "The more stringent the regulation is, the more eco homes become a mass product and thus a mass market."
Elsewhere in the world, price is often a major obstacle. For many, living in eco home will seem about as obtainable as living in a Palladian villa overlooking Lake Como. "For the moment we can talk about the eco house concept like a niche market," says Ruxandra Stefanescu, of Romanian architectural practice Soleta.
However, she says that a number of drivers are boosting their allure. "Rising energy prices, the availability of a greater number of technologies and materials … and the mandatory assessment of buildings in terms of energy efficiency represent a favourable context."
"When you are depending on the public electricity network and when you can't control the price, then you start looking for non-conventional solutions."
*Bringing sustainable homes in to the mainstream*
One NGO pushing the case for a scaling up of eco housing on an international scale is the World Green Building Council. The organisation recently released a report, The Business Case for Green Building, which showed a serious mismatch between the actual costs of green buildings and developers' expectations. While the typical cost compared to conventional buildings ranged from minus 0.4% to a high of 12.5%, the report showed developers would often estimate the cost at up to 29% more.
James Drinkwater, senior policy advisor to the WGBC's Europe regional network, suggests that by continuing to collaborate on sustainable building design, the industry will not only get a better steer on costs, but in turn prices will be driven down.
"Breaking down the silos and creating collaboration in the supply chain is key to scaling up the production of sustainable homes," he says, hinting that momentum is moving in the right direction.
"There has been an overall trend towards the reduction in design and construction costs associated with green building as building codes around the world become stricter, supply chains for green materials and technologies mature and the industry becomes more skilled at delivering green buildings," he says.
The backing of large developers is, of course, essential for improving the share of sustainable homes. "There are developers who are passionate advocates of green building, and there are developers who are sustainability laggards," says Drinkwater.
"Unfortunately in some countries the latter group are shouting the loudest and so policymakers are less inclined to transition towards higher standards for fear it will slow down the provision of housing."
For O'Flaherty, if eco housing is ever to become truly mass scale, better advocacy and communication by business is fundamental. In this way, it's more than just a case of changing policy, it's about a wholesale change of direction.
"You just have to keep banging the drum that there's a smarter way to build," he says.
*This content is brought to you by **Guardian Professional**. Become **GSB member** to get more stories like this direct to your inbox* Reported by guardian.co.uk 4 days ago.
The eco home that Max O'Flaherty designed – which won his firm a coveted EU award at the Royal Institute of British Architects annual awards last month – nearly didn't get built at all.
The House on Mount Anville, which put his practice, Aughey O'Flaherty, in the same bracket as star architects such as Zaha Hadid, was almost denied planning permission on the grounds that it would not have been sustainable to knock down its precursor: a 1970s bungalow.
"It was a leaky, drafty, poorly insulated house and there wasn't much architectural merit," says O'Flaherty. Thankfully, he and his team were able to demonstrate to the council that replacing it with a new glass, brick and timber structure which would be far more energy efficient.
In his design, super insulation, an airtight frame and triple-glazed windows are employed to maximise solar gain and reduce CO2 emissions. "We could show that, very quickly – after year four or five – that there would be a net gain; that it would be more sustainable compared to the old house, and even a refurbished house."
*Slow progress*
For O'Flaherty, it is "infuriating" that more houses are not built to greener standards. Homes can be fitted with photovoltaic panels, geothermal collectors and other hyper-efficient systems and sensors that adjust to minute changes in humidity or temperature, but sometimes "first principles", such as using simple materials and positioning a building so that rooms follow the path of the sun, are all you need, he says.
O'Flaherty added: "The construction industry is a very slow industry to change. If you are a house builder you want the lowest common denominator. You want the cheapest way from A to Z and you go with the norm.
"If you've got 100 houses and 95% are built in the traditional way and 5% in a more proactive way, it needs to be a particular consumer to go for the 5% – early adopters, forward-thinking people."
*Non-conventional solutions*
O'Flaherty's response has been, rather cannily, to begin offering buyers an off-the-shelf eco home for a couple of hundred thousand euros. It involves modular timber frame with thick thermal insulation, giving it an impressive BER A1 rating. It's early days, but it's a concept which has been successfully scaled up in some parts of Europe, and which he thinks could attract environmentally conscious consumers closer to home.
Germany is one country where this kit eco house concept has blossomed, growing from a cottage industry into a major sector. WeberHaus, for instance, has built around 20,000 energy efficient "preconfigurated" houses across Europe since 1990, such as Passive Houses, a type of ultra-low energy home.
A WeberHaus home can be built for about €200,000, says Holger Heid, the company's product manager. "If you compare the fuel, gas, electricity and other energy bills of a WeberHaus with a city flat, you can with our house easily [save] a quarter or fifth."
The market in Germany is however buoyed by a regulatory environment, which heightens the attractiveness of eco homes. "It depends a lot on the national building regulation," says Heid. "The more stringent the regulation is, the more eco homes become a mass product and thus a mass market."
Elsewhere in the world, price is often a major obstacle. For many, living in eco home will seem about as obtainable as living in a Palladian villa overlooking Lake Como. "For the moment we can talk about the eco house concept like a niche market," says Ruxandra Stefanescu, of Romanian architectural practice Soleta.
However, she says that a number of drivers are boosting their allure. "Rising energy prices, the availability of a greater number of technologies and materials … and the mandatory assessment of buildings in terms of energy efficiency represent a favourable context."
"When you are depending on the public electricity network and when you can't control the price, then you start looking for non-conventional solutions."
*Bringing sustainable homes in to the mainstream*
One NGO pushing the case for a scaling up of eco housing on an international scale is the World Green Building Council. The organisation recently released a report, The Business Case for Green Building, which showed a serious mismatch between the actual costs of green buildings and developers' expectations. While the typical cost compared to conventional buildings ranged from minus 0.4% to a high of 12.5%, the report showed developers would often estimate the cost at up to 29% more.
James Drinkwater, senior policy advisor to the WGBC's Europe regional network, suggests that by continuing to collaborate on sustainable building design, the industry will not only get a better steer on costs, but in turn prices will be driven down.
"Breaking down the silos and creating collaboration in the supply chain is key to scaling up the production of sustainable homes," he says, hinting that momentum is moving in the right direction.
"There has been an overall trend towards the reduction in design and construction costs associated with green building as building codes around the world become stricter, supply chains for green materials and technologies mature and the industry becomes more skilled at delivering green buildings," he says.
The backing of large developers is, of course, essential for improving the share of sustainable homes. "There are developers who are passionate advocates of green building, and there are developers who are sustainability laggards," says Drinkwater.
"Unfortunately in some countries the latter group are shouting the loudest and so policymakers are less inclined to transition towards higher standards for fear it will slow down the provision of housing."
For O'Flaherty, if eco housing is ever to become truly mass scale, better advocacy and communication by business is fundamental. In this way, it's more than just a case of changing policy, it's about a wholesale change of direction.
"You just have to keep banging the drum that there's a smarter way to build," he says.
*This content is brought to you by **Guardian Professional**. Become **GSB member** to get more stories like this direct to your inbox* Reported by guardian.co.uk 4 days ago.