New Strategies for Zero-Energy Housing - Open Evening Report

There were two talks at St Johns Church in Bridgetown, Totnes, on the evening of 23 May (continuing the series organised by Schumacher College and Transition Town Totnes) the first by Bob Tomlinson, co developer with Carole Salmon of The Wintles, an eco village at the edge of Bishops Castle in Shropshire, the second by the architect Bill Dunster, teacher for the course that week at Schumacher College.

Bob and Carole’s aim was to develop a small housing estate with a ‘sense of place’ and a ‘sense of community’. In this they have succeeded in a wonderful way and have shown what can be done (after huge initial difficulties in obtaining planning permission) to build homes so different from the rows of near identical houses with which ‘developers’ disfigure the suburban and rural areas of Britain.

At The Wintles the homes were built in clusters around communal, car free, green spaces. These clusters are designed for ‘conviviality’, that is, to allow those who live there to meet as they to and fro from their front doors. Porches provide spaces which are, in part, private and in part communal. The houses have only small gardens but each householder is allowed an allotment in the communal area.

The houses are built to high eco specification, with super insulation and triple glazing. Maximum use was made of local materials (Welsh slate, douglas fir, larch cladding). The insulation is borax treated, recycled newspaper. There is much individual variation in style between one house and another but architectural unity is preserved by this common use of local construction material. Gutters and downpipes are of copper.

The extensive use of glass for natural lighting and passive solar heating allows internal ‘gardens’. Wood burning stoves provide supplementary heating. Good design allows affordable housing in the sense that, whatever the initial cost, maintenance and heating bills are low.

As well as allotments, the remaining space of the site includes: grass space for games; orchards of apples, cob nuts, pears, plums, quinces, hazelnuts, cherries and greengages; a pond for newts, frogs, moorhens, sedge warblers and dragonflies; hedges for nesting birds and a meadow of crested dogtail, sweet fennel, knapweed, birdsfoot trefoil and cocksfoot.

For more information see www.livingvillage.com

Schumacher College is part of the Dartington Hall Trust, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and as a charity (company no. 1485560, charity no. 279756). Registered office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL, UK.