RETROFIT DESIGNS

Recognising that our homes are responsible for the creation of 27% of carbon emissions and in partnership with The Gentoo Group and the National Refurbishment Centre, the 2010 British Homes Awards have gone retro, challenging architects to submit their innovative retrofit design solutions for a terrace of four 1960s houses in Sunderland.

At the presentation of the British Homes Awards on July 1st, RIBA President Ruth Reed announced the five schemes to have been short-listed by the Panel of Judges, chaired by the Immediate Past President of RIBA, Sunand Prasad. The winning design, to be voted by the readers of The Daily Telegraph, will be announced at The RIBA Stirling prize in October.

The short-listed schemes are:

• Napper Architects with the Ethical Partnership with regen2gether
• Syte Architects with The Wrapped Terrace
• ST + R with Back Up
• Hess Kincaid Leach with Green 4 Life
• Fraher Architects & O-Negative with The Memory House

Announcing the shortlist, RIBA President, Ruth Reed, said:

“With the homes that each of us live in accounting for 27% of the carbon we emit, refurbishing the housing stock becomes a top priority. All of the architects shortlisted for this award have already demonstrated design flare in schemes that combine practical solutions and innovative ideas.”

Recognising that the winning design could become a benchmark prototype for how we retrofit our homes to improve their energy efficiency, Kevin Brennan, Head of Sustainability at VELUX, comments:

“While improving the energy efficiency of new homes is important, retrofitting our 25 million existing homes in an innovative and cost effective way will hold the key to significantly reducing the UK’s carbon emissions. However, we will only make homes truly sustainable if we are able to balance the need for reducing energy consumption with the need to ensure the comfort, health and wellbeing of the occupants.”

Stuart Hutchinson, Head of Design and Technical at Gentoo, said:

“This competition provides an excellent opportunity to help the industry come up with a replicable solution to retrofitting common housing stock. The designs submitted have been fantastic and we intend to work in partnership with the winning architects to develop a solution that fits.”

The 5 designs short-listed will inspire the energy efficient refurbishment of our existing housing stock and even though there can only be one winner- as voted by the readers of The Daily Telegraph and announced at this year’s Stirling Prize - all who participated are congratulated on their design vision.

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