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Can the household waste be reused as a construction material to build low energy buildings? Check out this interesting development in Brighton. The Brighton Waste House investigates strategies for constructing a contemporary, low energy, permanent building using over 85% ‘waste’ material drawn from household and construction sites.
Now fully completed, the building is Europe's first permanent public building made almost entirely from material thrown away or not wanted. It is also an EPC ‘A’ rated low energy building.
The Brighton Waste House aims to prove that under valued so-called waste material has potential to become a valuable resource and therefore prove “that there is no such thing as waste, just stuff in the wrong place!’. It also aims to prove that a contemporary, innovative, low energy building can be constructed almost entirely by young people studying construction trades, architecture & design. To this end over 300 students worked on the project which was initially fabricated in the workshops of City College Brighton and Hove, and then assembled and completed by students and apprentices between May 2013 and April 2014.
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Materials that have gone into the house include, old vinyl banners that you might see tied to street lamps during festivals, that tend to be date sensitive and are therefore only used once, are being used as internal vapour control layers. Thrown-away bricks, ply sheets and off-cut timber from other construction projects, as well as “rubbish” including old plastic razors, denim jeans, DVD’s and video cassettes, that are being slotted into wall cavities to help with insulation in the house, and will be monitored by a PhD student from the Faculty of Science 7 Engineering to see how efficient their insulation qualities are.
Old toothbrushes are also being used in the wall cavities, including over 20,000 of them that have only been used once by business class & first class passenger flying from Gatwick.
10 tonnes of chalk waste and 10% of clay create a rammed chalk wall, with the help from a compressor and pneumatic rammer. Rammed earth can contribute to the overall energy-efficiency of buildings. The density, thickness and thermal conductivity of rammed earth make it a particularly suitable material for storing passive solar energy as well as that given off by occupants of the building. Warmth takes almost 12 hours to work its way through a wall 35 cm thick.
The Waste House is engaging the community by working with City College Brighton and Hove, and Mears Group, allowing students and apprentices a chance to work on a live construction project. While being constructed over 750 school pupils from over 35 local primary, secondary and tertiary colleges visited the Brighton Waste House site.
Now completed the Brighton Waste House is being used by colleagues delivering the MA in Sustainable Design whose work will involve completing and updating the ‘live’ research project that is The Brighton Waste House. This innovative building is also the open public community hub for The Faculty of Arts. Therefore many of the schools that visited the construction site will now take part in creative workshops, seminars and events held at the Waste House, hosted or curated by artists, makers, designers, scientists, building contractors, or whoever wants to be involved in testing ideas around sustainable design.
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About the Team
Duncan Baker-Brown, Architect, Academic & Environmental Activist
Director of BBM Sustainable Design, award-winning architect, senior lecturer at the University of Brighton and an environmental campaigner, Duncan has been at the forefront of sustainable design for over 20 years since he designed and built the RIBA Competition winning scheme 'the house of the Future' with partner Ian McKay in 1994. In 1997 as Co-Director of BBM Duncan was part of the design team that won the competition to design The Greenwich Millennium Village in London. Since then he has practiced, researched and taught around issues of sustainable design & development. Duncan designed ‘The House That Kevin Built’ with Kevin McCloud in 2008. It was UK’s first prefabricated house made almost entirely of organic ‘compostable’ material and it was built in only 6 days live on Channel 4 attracting 5 million viewers a night. Duncan was the joint curator of the WasteZone seminar series and designer of the 9m high Waste Totem, both featured at EcoBuild 2013. He has also worked on numerous green retrofit projects, including ideas to keep & regenerate whole Victorian streets & 1960’s tower blocks so that they are Carbon Neutral. Duncan is the architect and coordinator of the University of Brighton’s Waste House, which was constructed with the help of The Mears Group and their apprentices, as well as students from City College Brighton & Hove and the University of Brighton Faculty of Arts. To date nearly 700 people have been involved with the project. Duncan is passionate about looking at ways of making our current cities truly beautiful, sustainable places to live in.
Cat Fletcher
Founding Member, Elected National Representative and Head of Media for Freegle UK (UK-wide organisation, formed in 2009 by experienced volunteers and members of the free reuse community with over 1.4 million members), Cat is also working with Brighton University on The House that Kevin Built project. Super scavenger Cat helped to set up the Waste Zone at Ecobuild. The Waste Zone was a temporary place dedicated to the discussion of the issues & huge potentials of seeing waste as a future resource. Students, activists, film-makers and designers of all kinds presented their ideas, showing examples of products, buildings, furniture etc – all made from waste. Cat was shortlisted in the Living Lab Global Awards, http://llga.org/solutions.php, an international competition to find innovative solutions for unique problems from 22 cities from around the world.
David M Pendegrass, MCIOB Mears Group
David Pendegrass is a Project Manager with the Mears Group at Brighton who currently is working in partnership with Brighton & Hove City Council. Since joining Mears David has Project Managed the Construction of the Brighton Housing Centre at Moulsecombe and some of the larger re-building of void properties for Brighton & Hove City Council. David commenced work with The Brighton Waste House Project in November 2012 and together with the project team helped bring together the design and implementation of the project and since work commenced on site in April 2013 has managed the build process overseeing the many University of Brighton and City College students together with volunteers from the public who helped build The House. This challenging project has added a new dimension to David’s experience. Prior to joining Mears, David had construction management roles with Mansell (30 Years) YJL, Osbourne and Blenheim House Construction and has managed construction works in many fields up to £20m in value with 40 years management experience. David started his working life with Mansell as an apprentice carpenter and having completed a 4 year apprenticeship in carpentry & joinery moved on to become a trainee manager in 1976. David progressed his career in site management and with further education at age 25 and 30, gained full membership of the Chartered Institute of Building at age 33.
Source: University of Brighton + BBM Architects