Abbey Park Road (Leicester Bus Garage)

Location: Abbey Park Road, Leicester
Client: Metropolitan Housing Trust
Description: 5 Solar urban blocks phased over 5 years
Value: £10M
Awards: Shortlisted for 2005 Housing Design Awards
Start / Completion: Start Summer 2006 - Completion 2011
Notes:

The latest government Energy White Paper proposes a 60% reduction in national CO2 emissions from mid-1990 levels by 2050. The redevelopment of the old Leicester bus garage site will set new standards for affordable homes by meeting this target on completion of the final phase.
The ZED blocks provide a high percentage of large 3, 4 and 5 bed homes with gardens, at the same time as achieving an overall density of around 120 homes / ha by placing a mixture of one and two bedroom flats above. Every home has its own south facing sunspace and terrace or garden, with its own 1kw peak solar electric power station. The challenge has been to maximise the contribution from on site renewable energy generation at the same time as providing a pedestrian permeable site layout opening onto the adjoining canal, good townscape, and a high provision of private defensible space. The concept is to reduce heat and power requirements, to the point where it becomes affordable to meet 60% of the building's energy use from renewable energy sources, generated within the sites boundaries. The site will do this by using ZED passive standards for airtight, super-insulated building fabric with heat recovery ventilation. Zero-heating specification homes will then incorporate a mixture of biomass fuelled heating, photovoltaic electric generation, domestic scale micro wind turbines, passive solar gain, thermally massive passive cooling technologies, and wind driven ventilation with heat recovery. The masterplan allows future upgrades to site-wide biomass combined heat and power, or fuel cell generation systems.