Architecture for eco-towns

Feature Factory’s design.

Gordon Brown’s planned eco-towns could learn more from a web site called Irresidence than from Prince Charles’ stately village of Poundbury.

Labour are planning five eco-towns, and apparently they are to be modeled on Poundbury which is more interested in reflecting England’s cultural heritage than its eco principles. You can visit the Irresidence web site to see the plans for fantastic, high-tech, high spec buildings using prefabricated parts and proven, factory tested designs, that could come off the production line in their hundreds if only someone would listen. The Treehugger web site says “it makes housing design more like industrial design.”

We hope the plans for what are already being called the “Brown Towns” call for building eco-villages first, and letting them grow into towns. Eco-towns need eco-communities, and they have to grow naturally and organically, not be placed down by administrative fiat like pieces on a chess board. Water and sewage have to be renewable and self-sustaining as well as electricity. And the people who live there will have to behave ecologically. It will be a ten year process.

“And launching eco-villages would avoid costly errors that could discredit the whole idea for future generations.

Economists have calculated that it is 25% more expensive to build eco-towns, so making them affordable for first-time buyers will be a complex and groundbreaking process.