The Prince’s Foundation unveiled the ‘Prince’s House’ at the Ideal Home Show, 2011 on the Opening Day
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
For the first time since 1935 a ‘royal' house has been built at the Ideal Home Show, which runs from the 11th - 27th March at London's Earl's Court.
Visitors to ‘The Prince's House' will be able to see HRH The Prince of Wales's answer to environmentally friendly living; a traditionally built low carbon home made from natural materials.
The Prince's House does not rely on gadgets or hi-tech materials to make it green and environmentally friendly but rather its carbon savings are built into its design with things like a highly insulated roof, walls and floor making a shell that is highly efficient.
The walls of the house are simple, solid clay block structures trapping pockets of air that keep warm in winter and cool in summer and dramatically reduce heating bills while the roof and floor are insulated with lime-hemp and sheep's wool.
The house at Earl's Court is a re-creation of a ground-breaking new home design currently being pioneered by the Foundation at the Building Research Establishment in Watford.
The Natural House will be a live demonstration model at the Ideal Home Show to represent a viable blueprint to help to support sustainable volume housing developments for the future, offering an achievable alternative to typical contemporary accommodation.
The Prince's Foundation believes building can be done in a way which is both sustainable and eye-catching at the same time. Rather than building more housing estates, it promotes the building of safe, pleasant and convenient neighborhoods with nearby shops, schools and play areas.
Chief Executive of The Prince's Foundation, Hank Dittmar says: "The Foundation is very proud of The Natural House and its eco design principles and we hope that people who take a look at our design at the Ideal Home show will see the beauty and the benefits of natural and traditional homes. This house design can be rolled out economically in large numbers all over the country. Our way of doing this would be to work with local communities to modify the house to fit in with the local character of the area - the one at Earl's Court is a suburban design."
The House has been manufactured off site and was delivered in modules to Earls Court prior to the show opening on March 11th, and fitted to a high specification with only the best British Materials, outlined by the Prince's Foundation's building requirements.
Once built, the demonstration house will be taken to the Scottish Ideal Home Show in Glasgow, later in the Year between the 27-30th May 2011, where it will be see for the second time by a further 45,000 visitors.
The partnership between The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment and the Ideal Home Show launched last year, begins its five year collaboration to help promote and build better neighborhoods and communities with the development of its first-ever traditional Georgian style family home, which will be the highlight of this year's show.
Lee Newton, Managing Director of Media 10 Ltd, commented: "It is important for us to understand what our visitors want from their homes and communities and how we can help them improve their homes and understand new developments and sustainability, for the future. We want to encourage people to have more of a say about where they live, the type of house they live in and their community, rather than accept something they do not like.
"This year's Ideal Home Show 2011, will see the first time we have created a royal house since 1935 where the King's House was presented to HM King George V, and this year's Prince's House will be a full scale model of a sustainable home that our visitors will be able to see for themselves, offering an attractive traditionally designed property that is genuinely better to live in."
The partnership between the Prince's Foundation and the Ideal Home Show will create a public forum, through the introduction of a public survey at this year's Ideal Home Show by asking visitors what their Ideal Neighbourhood would be, and what their opinions are on this unique ‘Prince's House' property, as well as opinions on development in general and the increasing environmental concerns surrounding domestic energy use.
The ‘Prince's House' was launched on The Opening Day of this year's Ideal Home Show, on Friday 11th March, at London Earls Court. The construction and build of this show house has been generously sponsored by Siemens, EDF Energy, and Tingdene and supported by Twfords, Little Green, Clearview Stoves, and Hansgrohe, as well as a wide range of suppliers.
The Ideal Home Show, London is going to be pone still until 27th March 2011, at London's Earls Court, so there is still time to go and see this and other eco solutions. Tickets can be either booked online or by calling the Ticket Hotline on 0844 415 4144, or for further information about the show visit the website www.idealhomeshow.co.uk. 50p per ticket sold goes to the Ideal Homes For Heroes appeal supporting ABF The Soldiers' Charity - see www.idealhomeshow.co.uk/ideal-homes-for-heroes/ for details.
Because of height and building constraints at Earl's Court, the Prince's House has been re-created using steel-framed modules, and is smaller than the prototype at BRE Watford. The Prince's Foundation is grateful to Tingdene for enabling us to create this model.
The Prince's House is capable of being built to the same cost, as other like eco-housing.
BRE Project Watford: The BRE Victorian House of the Future project demonstrates how we can upgrade existing housing stock rather than using more energy to make new buildings, whilst avoiding the waste associated with demolition and preserving the mix of architecture.
The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment: The PFFBI is an educational charity founded by The Prince of Wales and operating to a model of practice-based learning. The Princes Foundation engages in live projects at the scale of the region, the city, the neighbourhood, the town, in order to develop new ways of regenerating and building more lively and more environmentally sustainable communities.
As part of an ongoing brand partnership, the Ideal Home Show has also heavily invested in sourcing significant amounts of funding to assist the Prince's Foundation in the completion of their BRE Watford project. A programme designed to transform existing housing stock and Victorian buildings into energy efficient homes for the future launched by the Princes Foundation in 2006.
Since the Ideal Home Show 2010, organisers Media 10 have raised over £203,000 worth of crucial funding to complete the Natural house at the BRE in Watford.
I found my visit to the Prince's House extremely interesting and very much liked the use of the materials there as well as use of the wood-burning stove and reclaimed furniture in many areas.
This house clearly shows what can be done, with local and natural materials, without gadgets and hi-tech solutions, and that retrofitting of existing housing stock can create eco-homes.
It is the retrofitting of existing housing stock that should be the priority anyway rather than the silly notion of creating those concocted eco-towns that were planned by the previous Labor administration in the UK.
If we are talking eco-towns and -villages than they must be those that are, and some of those already exist, albeit in some way illegal or quasi-illegal, built by those that want to live there and not by Barrats and other homebuilders to make profits.
Self-build, while extremely popular in many other countries of Europe and in the USA seems to be, nay is being, frowned upon and even blocked at almost every turn by the powers-that-be inn Britain, aside from His Royal Highness who seems to be more than for it.
I think that in Britain we can count ourselves lucky to have such a highly placed person as HRH The Prince of Wales, our future Monarch, who so well understands the environment and its needs.
© 2011
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