news from the BRE Group
published: 21/1/2013
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Scottish Minister gets glimpse of future housing at BRE Scotland's Innovation Park
Scottish Housing and Welfare Minister, Margaret Burgess MSP took a visit to the BRE Scotland Innovation Park earlier today. The Park is a mini-community of demonstration homes and buildings that will be used to shape future housing in Scotland. It is based at Ravenscraig, the former steelworks site in Lanarkshire, which is currently undergoing significant regeneration.
Accompanied by Rufus Logan, Director of BRE Scotland (second left), the Minister was shown the projects on the Park to date:
- the super energy efficient timber frame visitor centre, designed to achieve BREEAM outstanding which was completed last September
- the Applegreen home - an offsite manufactured volumetric steel frame system house with integrated renewables currently under construction on the site
With responsibility for anti-poverty measures and welfare as well as homes and communities the Minister heard how the houses on the Park will be designed to create warm energy efficient environments for a fraction of the current running costs of Scotland’s existing housing stock.
Rufus Logan said “The Park is all about innovation and applying this to the challenges we face as a society, not only around reducing carbon emissions but also creating a better quality of life for our people. Scotland has the highest proportion of households in fuel poverty in the UK – almost one in four homes are spending more than 10% of their total income on energy to heat and run their homes. We need to address this in the construction and refurbishment of our new and existing homes and the Park is the catalyst to make this happen.”
The Minister met Michael McGuire, lead partner on the Curriculum House, which will be designed and constructed by pre- apprentice and apprentice students from local Motherwell College’s CADD, Architectural Design and Construction courses.
She also launched the build start on the Resource Efficient House, a Zero Waste Scotland demonstration project of how the latest principles in resource efficiency and waste reduction can be applied in house building.
The Minister said “ What I’ve seen here today is an outstanding example of innovation and partnership working in practice,; delivered on a site that will stimulate greater engagement with both industry and individuals interested in learning about, assessing and demonstrating new technologies and building designs. I look forward to visiting again.”
The next phase of buildings to be constructed on the Park include:
- The Homegrown Timber House which will showcase the use of innovative Scottish timber products to deliver an affordable, low embodied energy, healthy and thermally efficient dwelling
- The BRE Refurbished House – the recreation of a full-scale ‘four-in-a-block’ – a typical Scottish dwelling with each of the four compartments refurbished using different approaches, materials and technologies, which will be monitored over time to provide real performance data.
Over the next two years a total of ten full scale homes and buildings will be constructed on the Park. They will demonstrate indigenous designs, materials, techniques and technologies that will address the major challenges faced by the local and global built environment.
For more information, please contact Linda McKeown at BRE on 01923 664569, mobile 0777 2228768, email mckeownl@bre.co.uk
related news:
BRE Scotland Visitor Centre wins sustainable design award
Alex Neil MSP opens BRE Innovation Park@ Ravenscraig
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