On Thursday 18 May JTP hosted an evening event at our London studio to share the latest updates from one of our most exciting current projects, The Home for All Seasons. The event was part of Green Sky Thinking 2017, organised by Open City.
The JTP project team, together with Ed Barsley from The Environmental Design Studio (T-E-D-S), presented the story so far of their award-winning design for a resilient home; how they are developing the concept to become a viable house type to help mitigate the effects of climate change, and the challenges and opportunities they face in taking it to market
After a warm welcome from Marcus Adams, JTP’s Managing Partner, Rebecca Taylor and Ed Barsley introduced The Home for All Seasons, outlining the background of the Sunday Times British Homes Awards competition that originally inspired the design.
The team explained how the design evolved to solve as many problems as possible, with each feature of the home coming together to deliver integrated benefits.
Elevating the first floor level was the first significant design decision, with the primary purpose to lift the entire habitable zone out of reach of the water while providing safe access and egress during a flood event – but the team also recognised the opportunity this provided to draw cool air up through the home from the shaded space beneath, creating a passive stack ventilation effect.
Furthermore, and most significantly for the team, the elevated first floor presented the opportunity to connect the homes with a single causeway, creating a community of neighbours that can visit and care for each other during a flood.
As well as physical factors the design team also considered resilience in a wider sense; and it was this inclusive interpretation that made the submission stand out to both the judges and the public. The design responds to economic resilience by generating its own renewable energy on the roof, and provides the opportunity to control solar gain in summer.
The Home for All Seasons also responds to a growing need for social resilience, recognising the current pressure on housing supply as well as the shift in demand for homes in which to stay for generations to come.
Next Francis Miller, of The Prince’s Business Emergency Resilience Group (BERG), shared his experiences of the ‘human face’ of flooding, working with SME’s and communities to better equip them to adapt and cope when a major weather incident occurs.
Francis has seen first-hand the effects a lack of effective planning and resilience measures have on business owners and homeowners in areas afflicted by repeat flooding, with the average household taking 6 months to return to their home after a flood event, and up to 15 months to recover completely.
Thirdly and finally Lindsay Smales, an urban designer and community planner at Leeds Beckett University, took the stage to speak about his personal experiences of flooding in his home town of Calder Valley. He shared the traumatic story of Boxing Day 2015, the day of one of the most significant floods the area has seen in the past 15 years.
River levels in the town of Todmorden reached 3.5m higher than normal that day, and by 2pm more than a metre of fast-flowing river water had flooded the town centre, including 80% of properties, causing around £47million in losses to the local economy.
The Environment Agency spent £23 million in preceding five years on flood mitigation and defence measures, which had worked up until that day, when they merely displaced the water down the valley. Lindsay highlighted the need for design solutions that create not only resilient homes but resilient communities too.
The presentations were followed with a lively Q&A with the audience, who were keen to discuss the points raised. One audience member wanted to know, “Your response is an innovative approach and I’m intrigued to know whether you drew inspiration from other places around the world with similar problems.”
Fred London, a Partner at JTP and also a key member of The Home for All Seasons design team, highlighted the example of Queensland, Australia, where the typology does exist, but for different reasons. “The homes are on stilts for the cooling updraft effect this provides. Then the area flooded – and the stilts were quite handy!”
Next the team were asked, “Do you think the planning system might restrict this type of dwelling? Is there something you’d have to do earlier in the planning process to ensure a site like this can’t be discounted straightaway by the local authority?”
Another comment came from an engineer guest, who said, “I think the key stage in the timeline of a flood is the very last stage. You get to the point where the flood’s gone, then you spend billions of insurance money restoring the status quo – which is completely the wrong position to return to because a few years later you get the same old scenario, and it just continues. That’s why I think this house is such a fantastic idea.”
The final point raised highlighted the promising future for The Homes for All Seasons, responding to a question from the audience about the biggest barriers to development.
We’d like to thank our excellent speakers and all who attended our event, we were delighted by the level of engaging discussion and we hope you found it interesting too!
