Raging Bill

Bill Dunster has his eyes on the Government's eco-towns. TiC strips the architect down to his green shoots to find out what gives him the zed factor.

ONCE SEEN as the maverick pioneer behind the Beddington Zero Emissions Development (Bedzed) in Surrey, Bill Dunster has come under fire for being too visionary and too ahead of the market.

After its completion in 2002, Bedzed has been criticised for being too costly and too complicated by those in the construction industry unwilling to accept change.

But as the Government prepares to announce developers for its 10 Eco-towns, the 47-year-old is firing on all low-carbon cylinders to launch the construction industry into a green utopia.

Eastern promise

Recovering from an attack of flu that has robbed the Zedfactory staff of good health, Dunster talks about the company’s current work in China.

“It is a market you probably can’t ignore,” he says. “It is building an area the size of London every year. It is producing mandatory renewable energy targets for all new projects at the moment.”

China’s dramatic fluctuations in temperature mean it is significantly hotter than the UK and very frequently colder, making Dunster’s autonomous designs more relevant than to the UK.

Building on the principles of passive solar gain and onsite renewable energy generation, Zedfactory has unveiled masterplans for a suburban extension of Changsha, the capital city of Hunan province, of between 120 and 150 homes and a housing development that will be the first carbon neutral community in Beijing.

One of the challenges he faces in bringing his concepts to China is cultural tradition.

“They have very strong beliefs on orientation, based on feng shui principles, which paradoxically often causes us problems,” he says. There are also space standards for dwellings. “The minimum-size Chinese flat would have space standards equivalent to a luxury flat in Mayfair. So that was a surprise.”

Dunsternomics

Dunster has used his work in China to set up a cut-price supply chain of renewable technologies, which he uses for his projects in China and the UK and to sell to the UK construction market and general public. “The Chinese are already making more solar panels than any other nation in the world,” he says. “Things like thermal collectors go down to much colder temperatures in winter and go to much hotter temperatures in the summer. We found that basically we can bring these components back and we’re about half the cost of anyone over here.”

Dunster has little time for those bemoaning the cost and space of fitting renewable technologies onsite. “It is a ridiculous argument, frankly,” he says. “It is only too expensive because nobody’s doing it. The positive thing about the Eco-towns programme is that it will generate the economies of scale we need to get out of this Catch- 22 situation.”

Last month, Zedfactory exhibited its Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH) Level 6 Ruralzed timber frame house at the joint Ecobuild and Futurebuild exhibition.

Currently six Ruralzed houses are under construction for the Metropolitan Housing Trust and English Partnerships in Upton, Northampton, as part of a £40m, 350-home masterplan due for completion next summer. The scheme is looking to house between 70 and 80 of the laminated timber homes.

On assessing timber’s credentials to meet the country’s housing needs, Dunster says its biggest challenge lies not in its properties but in the campaigning organisations that promote it uncritically. “We’re really asking for a more considered acknowledgement of its performance,” says Dunster. “Timber is good for structure but is rubbish for providing passive cooling. Where we are moving towards now is a more precise use of materials. We use all our industrial partners but very precisely. It’s about using the right tool for the right job in the right place.”

The Ruralzed house is one of a long line of initiatives that demonstrates the practice’s readiness for the Eco-towns. “We are totally gearing up for it right now. We’ve got our supply chain in order and we’ve got training courses for contractors.

“If you’ve got to do a whole town of CSH Level 6 homes you’re going to want a lot of architects who can do this. You’re going to want a lot of supply chains that are ready. That’s what Zedfactory does. It supplies the bits that makes these things possible.”

Culture of the code

Willful and headstrong, Dunster has often been misinterpreted by his industry as wayward and eccentric.

His public speaking can be a fiery display that surrenders some, provokes others, but leaves everybody charged with opinion.

The truth is, he is very personal and confident in his design philosophy yet utterly frustrated that the UK construction industry has lagged so far behind what he’s been predicting and talking about for more than 20 years.

The curse of being the first off the blocks has left Dunster aggrieved that he and his practice have been seen by the industry as a niche R&D player.

Andy von Bradsky, chairman of PRP Architects collaborated with Zedfactory on a block of 12 new-build flats in St Matthews, Brixton. The collaboration --was a partnership between the two practices called PRP Zedfactor. He says Dunster is very advanced in his thinking and very passionate. “He’s often a bit too far ahead of the market and it needs to catch up with him. There is a point where R&D is out on its own and then suddenly the market catches up with it. It is at tipping point now and the gap is closing very fast.”

Chris Twinn, director of sustainable buildings at Arup has worked with Dunster for more than 20 years. He was also part of the project team on Bedzed. “He doesn’t believe we should compromise,” he says of Dunster. “There are only certain types of clients that can take that.

“Most developers try to ring fence the risks whether it’s zero carbon, water, waste or the social aspect. Bill works on all these different fronts simultaneously and developers find it difficult to work in that way.”

The result is that Zedfactory has built up a portfolio of selected clients.

Stephen Howlett, chief executive of Bedzed client, the Peabody Trust, says from its perspective the project was risky for the time. “It combined a whole range of things in a zero energy design building. Some of which worked and some which didn’t.

“One of the important things about cutting CO2 consumption is changing people’s behaviours and residents have signed up to that in a big way at Bedzed. They are very proud of it.”

Dunster concedes the worst thing to happen was the failure of the combined heat and power plant, which the practice is replacing this year. Despite that he says the scheme proves you can achieve high-density sustainable living and still have very high levels of private amenity and reasonable levels of public space.

It is only now with the imminent enforcing of the CSH that the industry is beginning to come round to Dunster’s thinking, says von Bradsky.

“The industry is slowly moving towards some kind of solution that has been influenced by the likes of Bedzed,” he says. “It is about the industry catching up with Bill in a way.”

To date Zedfactory’s work has been mostly Registered Social Landlord schemes, working on private and public sector developments. But since the publication of the code its first private sector clients have come forward.

The zed factor

Dunster’s relentless pursuit of the autonomous city began in the late 1970s, when he earned his architect stripes at Edinburgh University.

Bordered by the 1970s environmental movement and the emerging punk etiquette, Dunster recalls being taught by the last of the hippies. “It was kind of punk versus hippy period and before post modernism got all silly and Thatcher did her worst,” he says with nostalgia.

Studying solar housing in his second and final year at Edinburgh got Dunster hooked on the trail of the green dream, way before the terms sustainability and zero carbon worked their way passed anyone’s lips. “I have distant memories as a kid of beautiful orchards being turned into executive homes and vowing that something had to be done about it,” he says.

Prior to setting up Bill Dunster Architects Zedfactory in 1999, Dunster was an associate at Michael Hopkins and Partners for 15 years completing Nottingham University’s new Jubilee Campus, which scooped the Stirling Prize for sustainability in 2001.

Bedzed was the result of more than 10 years of research into high-density sustainable developments. It fused together Dunster’s own Zedstandards, co-produced by carbon auditing firm Best Foot Forward and provided his own way of delivering a zero carbon and zero waste development strategy.

Despite being more holistic than the CSH, he finds it gratifying that the code has aligned itself very close to the Zedstandards. “We would like to think that some of our work has formed it,” he says.

Does he see himself as Britain’s foremost green architect? “I’d never agree to that statement. We are one of them,” he says softly, before relaying a message to the industry at large. “We’re looking to scale up our activities. We want to get other people in the construction industry to use and work with us and our supply chain. We really want to move from a kind of niche R&D player into mainstream and we are ideally placed to do that because we’ve been thinking about it for so damn long.”