The awards have been launched by the Trust to celebrate the achievements of the Passivhaus pioneers in the UK, to highlight that Passivhaus can apply to any building type and that Passivhaus design can create beautiful buildings. Winners were announced on 4th July at a ceremony at Senate House in London and were selected through voting by members of the Passivhaus Trust, following a shortlisting process by a panel of industry experts. The Judges were:

• Wolfgang Feist, Founder, Passivhaus Institut
• Nick Grant, Technical Director, Passivhaus Trust
• Hattie Hartman, Sustainability Editor, The Architects' Journal
• Sofie Pelsmakers, Co-founder, Architecture for Change

Passivhaus remains a relatively new concept within the UK construction industry and the Wimbish development is the first rural housing project in the UK to achieve full accredited status from the Passivhaus Institute in Germany. The dwellings were designed to achieve both accredited Passivhaus standards and Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4. In order to achieve Passivhaus accreditation, the dwellings were designed to achieve high levels of air tightness, minimal thermal bridging and a system of mechanical ventilation with heat recovery was utilised.

Paul Houghton of Davis Langdon, an AECOM company, said “Although we have a successful track record in the delivery of social housing projects with high levels of ‘code for sustainable homes’ requirements, this was the first scheme Davis Langdon provided consultancy services on that was to be built to accredited Passivhaus standards. We knew that this type of project would present challenges in terms of achieving the thermal performance targets and procuring a suitable contractor who bought into the Passivhaus concept and could also deliver the scheme within budget. As such we developed an innovative procurement methodology to provide cost certainty and co-ordination of design.We consider that this scheme for Hastoe Housing has gone some way to dispel the myth that building to accredited Passivhaus standards is costly to build and difficult to achieve. We truly believe that Passivhaus is the way forward in providing highly sustainable housing with low running costs for the residents, without the need for ‘bolt on’ technologies.”

Chris Parsons of Parson’s Whitley, the project architect, added, “We are really proud to be the recipients of the first ever UK Passivhaus award for residential buildings and it confirms our position as a leading innovator in the development of a low energy, low carbon future for the UK housing stock. I think we were successful because the scheme of 14 dwellings for Hastoe Housing Association, demonstrated that the methodology could be delivered in the mainstream housing environment at a reasonable cost. The energy use of the houses has been monitored through the UEA for 12 months and we could demonstrate really low fuel bills and really high comfort levels.”

Visit the official Wimbish project website

Visit the Passivhaus Trust website