Sustainable Design in the UK

I was invited to give a talk about Earthsong on 9 September to HTA, a large multi-disciplinary design firm in Camden Town, London. HTA specialises in collaborative design of housing and regeneration projects, working on projects ranging in scale from masterplans of whole city regions, central urban areas and neighbourhoods, to apartment blocks and housing schemes. About 30 architects, urban designers, landscape designers, engineers and sustainability consultants gathered in the central meeting area of the HTA office to listen, and the questions and interaction showed a high level of interest in our story.

They are currently designing a 188 house “ecovillage” near Bristol called Hanham Hall, after they won the competition to design this pilot project for the British government of a zero carbon community. As well as cutting edge zero-carbon building methods and services, they are building a community management structure and a development trust into this mix of affordable rent and private sale homes. They were particularly interested in the organizational structure of Earthsong and ways of enrolling people into taking ownership of their community. They were also encouraged by hearing how beneficial it has been at Earthsong to keep the cars away from houses, and may replicate this for some clusters of houses at Hanham Hall.

HTA themselves are rather unusual in that they have a working kitchen in the middle of their open plan office, cooking lunch for all their employees every day. The central area is filled with tables and chairs, used during work hours for meetings of project teams, and at lunchtime for eating and socialising. This is definitely a win-win idea, with the designers feeling valued and nourished, and inevitably spend some time discussing projects over lunch.