Wake up call: as governments around the world struggle to provide sufficient affordable homes in cities, BedZED has much to teach architects, developers, and residents alike.

This scheme should need little introduction. But apparently it does. While the aspirations of BedZED (Beddington Zero Energy Development) have been well documented (1) (AR June 2001), 18 months after the first residents moved in it is time to think beyond the statistics that qualify its conception. This is, let us not forget, a piece of radical architectural design, and deserves to be seen within a wider context as a model for future volume housing.

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Beyond reducing energy consumption to 10 per cent of similar suburban homes built to 1995 regulations, it is a model of place making, and of high-density suburban urbanization. A model of architectural imagination and mixed-use integration. And above all of optimism and progress. But before this, it is perhaps equally pertinent to state what BedZED is not. It is not a high budget, highly refined show piece. It is certainly not architectural wallpaper. It is instead an exemplary working experiment: the kind of megaprototype essential to test issues concerning future housing generations. So those who criticize the eccentricity of some of its details clearly miss the point. After all, with over ten years as a key associate of Michael Hopkins and Partners, Bill Dunster graduated from one of the best schools of architectural refinement. Since leaving MHP however, he now chooses to prioritize other broader facets of architecture, of which there are many.

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Meeting him on the BedZED site recently, where he runs his own design studio (ZED Factory), Dunster constantly draws parallels between BedZED and the adjacent development, the likes of which he sees as obsolete. Here he plays developers at their own game, adopting their language and their currency--that of economy. Through an integrated approach, BedZED provides the same dwelling density as the adjacent speculative development, but with a 35 per cent increase in space allowance. This in turn provides valuable revenue earning benefits in the form of additional live-work units, and community facilities such as surgery, a community hall and a bar. It also results in a vastly improved public realm, with a reduction in naked tarmac and virtually no unused (and therefore unloved) residual space. This is a principle that Dunster describes as using planning gain to facilitate carbon trading. In other words, not only does mixed use bring the social and environmental benefits of a 24 hour operation that sustains diverse communities and balances energy loads around the clock but, most significantly, the increased commercial revenue relative to the cost of the land can be offset against the necessarily front loaded costs of producing a carbon neutral development.

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Improved density is achieved through the resolution of Dunster's integrated cross section. Defined by solar access criteria, a few simple ground rules dictate that all dwellings face south while workspaces face north. This in turn generates four variant terraces, the cross sections of which combine spaces from up to four self-contained units, each with their own entrance and external garden. By interlocking livework spaces with maisonettes, loft apartments and two sky gardens, the central terraces achieve a density in excess of 100 homes per ha, providing 400 rooms and 200 jobs per ha, and 26 sq m of private garden compared with 8 sq m of public space per home. A target that if replicated would reduce urban sprawl to about 25 per cent of the projected footprint over the next 100 years, resulting in all our housing needs being achievable on brown field sites.

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Following Tom Dyckhoff's stirring review in the national press, Dunster's ZED Factory has been inundated with people wanting to do a ZED (a zero energy development). With a list of over 700 people it is clear that BedZED is responding to a real need, and when sufficient clusters of people emerge other developments will be built.

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It is for these reasons and many more (1) that it is especially disappointing that BedZED did not win the recent RIBA Stirling Prize for Architecture; Britain's premier award, that being broadcast on national television, has the potential to send a message far beyond the limitations of the architectural world. While the winner, Herzog & De Meuron's Laban Centre is truly exquisite, it is with respect just another beautiful building, highly refined in both its conception and detail, in response to a gift of a brief. But, as we are faced with an international housing crisis, we must see that BedZED is so much more than a collection of well intended green houses, and if we really want to break down the marginalization of green isues, it certainly should have won more than a specific sustainability award.

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So it comes down to us. If you are reading out there, here is a call to duty for Messrs Mass Housing: take next week off, and spare us the thousands of soulless houses that you could build during that time. Put down your speculative house plan pattern books and consider the genuine potential of your productivity and profitability. Invest in front end design and invest in diversity. Without you, little will be achieved, as you alone have the means to radically improve the landscape of our built environment. So, go to BedZED. Then wake up and help us all live the dream. ROB GREGORY

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Architect

Bill Dunster Architects, London

Client

The Peabody Trust 

Environmental consultants

BioRegional Development Group

M&E and building physics

Ove Arup Partners

Structural and civil engineer

Ellis & Moore

Quantity surveyor 

Gardiner & Theobald

Photographs

Dennis Gilbert/VIEW

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HOUSING, SUTTON, ENGLAND

1 For further detailed analysis www.zedfactory.com

BedZED (2002). BRECSU Best Practice Programme, Crown Copyright. Sustainable Urban Design--An Environmental Approach (2002). Randall Thomas, Spon Press.