A Vision from 2030
By 2030, the appearance of the existing building stock would not differ very much from how it looks now. Those properties that could be insulated internally with cavity wall and loft insulation, look largely unchanged. Apart from solar panels and photovoltaic slates shimmering on roofs in the summer sun and the triple glazed windows many of them now have; it is mainly the homes built with a single skin wall that had to be externally clad and then re-rendered that look different. There are also noticeably more people occupying buildings, and greater attention given to detail in the gardens, many of which are used for growing food. But it is in the areas of new housing that the main differences can be seen.
In spite of the move towards zero carbon building standards, the sharp hike in oil prices after the first oil shock in 2012 made much modern construction practice no longer viable. With thousands of builders in the area trained only to build with materials and techniques that were no longer sustainable, there was a new urgency to move rapidly towards building with re-used and recycled building materials and to switch from new-build to the refurbishment of old and existing buildings and the sub-division of larger buildings into a number of smaller units.
A walk around the ATMOS development, on the old Dairy Crest site, takes one past offices and workspaces, light industrial units, and then houses, all built to the highest levels of energy efficiency, with predominantly local materials. The place buzzes with people and activity. The lower KEVICC site has also been partially developed, again with houses built to the highest standards, with south-facing shared gardens and also with gardens on their roofs. Over at Baltic Wharf, a scaled down development on the waterfront has been designed to allow the wharf to continue to be used as a working dock for bringing goods into the town as an increasingly viable alternative to road freight, while also integrating housing, work units, and the town’s first co-housing development.
All three are designed to minimise car use, fleets of shared electric vehicles being available to residents. The new buildings at KEVICC are a celebration of local materials, and feature the first food-producing roof garden in the county. The buildings are heated entirely by the body heat of the students. Dartington Estate is now home to two eco-village developments, providing affordable housing for key workers employed by the Agroforestry Farm project. Almost all (93%) of the building materials are from on the estate itself, and provide an important research opportunity into how to house the many thousands of people who will be required to move into rural areas to help with food production as the oil required to run conventional agriculture becomes unaffordable.
These new ‘quarters’ of Totnes, and the beautiful, quirky and iconic buildings they contain, are now as much of an attraction for tourists as the Elizabethan merchants’ houses at heart of the town. Their creation was also the opportunity for a huge programme of retraining of local builders, and to the establishment of many new businesses to supply the materials that are now needed for sustainable construction.
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