How was the design chosen?
The intention was to achieve low construction costs by using a repetitive modular structure to simplify the construction and to make use of off-the-shelf components. This combined with minimal or even zero running costs could then reduce immediate and future potential financial burdens. Nick Martin (one of the project members), combined his interests in renewable energy and low impact developments to consider various concepts that lead him to the earth-sheltered option. In the meantime he won the tender in 1993 to build the home of Prof. Brenda and Dr. Robert Vale, the UK’s first sustainable town house. It is an autonomous house with ‘net zero CO2’ emissions, of low embodied energy, deriving power from photovoltaic arrays and passive solar heating. Nick Martin was so convinced by many of the construction principles that he commissioned Dr.
