More than just funding: working with Clarion to test our William Sutton Prize-winning concept

By Melissa Dowler, Director of Bell Phillips Architects

The past decade has seen a series of seismic shifts in the housing sector. Three of the most significant influences on these shifts have been Brexit and the resulting impacts on labour and material costs, the Grenfell tragedy and its resulting impact on regulation and building materials, and of course the increasing urgency for action in relation to the climate crisis and the impact of our built environment on our carbon emission goals.

As an architecture practice working predominantly in housing, we are passionate about our role in building more ethically and sustainably. We have over twenty years of experience delivering exemplar housing and are keen to put this knowledge to good use and further amplify our voice within the sector towards a more positive and sustainable future. To this end The William Sutton Prize seemed an obvious fit – giving us the opportunity to further develop and promote our ideas around sustainable design, whilst also working directly with one of the largest affordable housing providers in the country on how these proposals could be practically implemented.

The key word in that previous paragraph is ‘implemented’. Over the last few years Bell Phillips have been working on the development of a carbon calculator to use on projects to develop a greater depth of understanding surrounding materials and their carbon footprint – both the embodied carbon itself and that related to availability and sourcing processes. This has been incredibly helpful in building a deeper understanding of how we should design, but a theoretical understanding only paints half the picture. For us, the appeal of The William Sutton Prize wasn’t just access to funding, but the opportunity to work with Clarion on the ‘proof’ – a test design worked through side by side with the Clarion team to validate our findings both in terms of financial viability and deliverability.

Our stated aim was ‘the creation of a new vernacular architecture’ that would not only deliver low embodied carbon homes, but do so with a new architectural language derived from the natural properties of the chosen materials. Over the last twelve months we’ve had the opportunity to work with the technical teams within Clarion to develop our designs, sense-checking at each step to ensure that what we are producing is realistic and deliverable, and workshopping through any obstacles along the way.

In addition, during this time, an opportunity arose for us to form part of a larger team (with Haworth Tompkins and Jas Bhalla Works) for the commission of the detailed design component for the first phase of the Tendring Colchester Borders Garden Community. This has been a fantastic opportunity not only to create a pilot project based on our research which will be delivered in the next few years, but also to share our work with a wider team of designers and work collaboratively to develop a new suite of housing designs for Clarion with sustainability at their heart.

At the time of writing this piece, it’s looking like the planning application for Tendring will be submitted over the summer, and we’re in the process of completing our final embodied carbon calculations for our preferred designs. The findings of our research clearly illustrates a path to net-zero for low-rise housing and a language derived from the materials and their properties that we hope people will love. The William Sutton Prize has given us both time and opportunity to develop our ideas with the right people around the table to make those ideas a reality.

Watch this space for the next chapter in the story…