#ecohouses

This blog is reBloged from Kelly Hart's Blog

http://blog.greenhomebuilding.com/2011/03/affordable-eco-homes-report.html

Kelly Hart writes the leading #1 blog on Green Building and I felt like I should share this wonderful article with my small circle of fans following my new blog on green living. It takes the all together good idea of building green and sustainable to the economic and psychological level as to why people are or are not still doing it.  Thanks Kelly.

Affordable Eco-homes Report

 Dr.Jenny Pickerill recently  traveled around the world on a Winston Churchill Trust Travelling Fellowship on a quest for information and insights on how folks in England (where she teaches at the University of Leicester) might better address needs for sustainable housing. One of her stops was in the rural area of Colorado state, where I live, and I had the pleasure of spending time with her, introducing her to some of green building activity in this area. Back at home in England now, Jenny has issued a preliminary report on her findings, which she is allowing me to quote below. I feel that her conclusions are pertinent to most places in the world. We need both a technical assessment of materials and methods used, and a social assessment of people’s choices and decisions in order to understand eco-housing. There is a diverse variety of eco-housing worldwide.  The definition used in this report is that an eco-building minimises resource use (in construction and life-cycle) while also providing a comfortable environment in which to live. We already have the technical knowhow, and many working examples, to build resilient eco-houses in Britain. However, ecological building methods remain marginalised and often misunderstood.  Eco-building will only be adopted if it offers what people demand from a house and that they can live how they want to within it. The success of eco-housing is only as great as the behaviour of the people who live in it. Construction and technology cannot compensate for excessive energy use.  There remains a perception that building an eco-house is more costly, whereas figures for the lifecycle costs of buildings have proved that in the long term they are actually cheaper. More investment may be required upfront but it pays off in costing less to run throughout its lifetime.  Living sustainably has been associated with forgoing (doing without) many elements of contemporary life. However, a good eco-house is actually more comfortable. It is not technology, or even politics, which is holding us back in building more eco-houses, it is deep rooted cultural and social conventions in how we live and what we expect houses to do for us. Choices of building materials are made according to complex compromises between cost, local availability, skills and expertise required, suitability for climate, ecological properties, maintenance requirements and cultural attachments to certain forms. Thus eco-materials need to satisfy many criteria before they are adopted.  Eco-building involves more than technical changes to construction; it involves cultural shifts in how we consider our houses and homes.  There are dynamic relationships between physical structures and individual behavioural practices, culture, history and place. There are many simple ways to make eco-housing more affordable, including:

Reducing the size

Simple design and avoiding the use of unnecessary technology  

Designing affordability in at the start 

Designing in modular units so that a building can be extended at a later stage 

Internal open plan design to enable maximum flexibility

Using the space between buildings  

Building collectively  

Sharing common facilities and infrastructure  

Sharing the cost of the land  

Avoiding the use of experts  

Participating in the debate about new planning regulations to ensure that eco-building is permissible.

Careful choice of materials   

Using pre-fabricated elements or existing structures  

Avoiding a purist approach 

Ensuring design is aesthetically pleasing 

Using hybrid combinations of materials 

Planning favours buildings which conform to existing styles and norms and building regulations need to be negotiated. Eco-building is gendered in that is it perceived to be a male domain where men are presumed to be better builders, more men than women actually build and women find their ideas and contributions to eco-building are often belittled. Socially constructed notions of gender have determined that strength is the most important attribute required for building, which is not true. The replication of eco-build techniques worldwide has less to do with whether the build actually worked or its cost, but is influenced by the less quantifiable factors of foreign importation of ideas, the appeal of the aesthetics, open discussion of failure, a critical mass of support, assertive pioneers, and people understanding how their existing houses work.  Further research work is needed on how people understand their houses, how eco-build approaches are replicated, post-occupancy evaluations and the cultural dimensions of eco-building.

This blog is reBloged from Kelly Hart's Blog

http://blog.greenhomebuilding.com/2011/03/affordable-eco-homes-report.html