Development company Human Nature has received planning approval to transform a former industrial site in Lewes into a sustainable 685-home neighbourhood that will be the UK’s largest made from timber.
The Phoenix, which was granted planning permission last week, will be built from engineered timber and be the most sustainable neighbourhood in the UK, according to Human Nature.
The buildings in the Phoenix development will have engineered timber structures
“One year after proposals were announced for the transformation of a 7.9-hectare brownfield site into the UK’s most sustainable neighbourhood, the Phoenix development has today been granted planning permission, taking the visionary project a step closer to reality,” said Human Nature.
“When complete, it will be the UK’s largest timber-structure neighbourhood and a blueprint for sustainable placemaking and social impact that can be deployed at scale.”
It will be located on a former industrial site
Located in the South Downs National Park, the Phoenix will contain energy-efficient homes, public space and healthcare, retail, hospitality and industrial space, all constructed from engineered timber including cross-laminated timber.
It will be the largest structural timber neighbourhood in the UK by number of units, Human Nature’s head of sustainable construction Andy Tugby told Dezeen.
The buildings will range from two to five storeys tall and be clad in prefabricated panels made from locally sourced timber and biomaterials such as hemp.
A riverside walk will feature in the neighbourhood. Image by Carlos Penálver
Industrial structures on the site will be repurposed to house most of the community spaces, including a canteen, event hall, taproom, fitness centre, workspace and studios.
The Phoenix’ homes will be designed to be energy efficient and powered by renewable energy sourced from on-site photovoltaic panels and an off-site renewable energy facility.
Aiming to create a place for all generations and for people with mixed incomes, 30 per cent of the 685 residences will be affordable homes – 154 of which will be built to the government’s Local Housing Allowance rates and the remainder built as part of the First Homes scheme.
The Phoenix will be designed as a walkable neighbourhood that prioritises people over cars, with a mobility hub providing electric car shares, car hire, electric bike services and shuttle buses to help encourage a shift away from private vehicle use.
Public squares, gardens, community buildings and a riverside pathway that stretches the length of the site will provide space designed for interaction between residents.
The development will contain energy-efficient homes
The Phoenix masterplan was designed by Human Nature’s in-house design team with UK architecture studio Periscope and Kathryn Firth, director of masterplanning and urban design at Arup.
Developed designs for the scheme will be made in collaboration with UK architecture studios Archio, Ash Sakula, Mae Architects, Mole Architects and Periscope and engineering firms Expedition Engineering and Whitby Wood.
The Phoenix aims to provide sustainable housing to people with a range of income brackets. Image by Carlos Penálver
Human Nature is a development company based in Lewes that was founded by former Greenpeace directors Michael Manolson and Jonathan Smales.
Other timber developments published on Dezeen include a zero-carbon housing scheme in Wales by Loyn & Co and Henning Larsen’s plans for Copenhagen’s first all-timber neighbourhood.
The images are by Ash Sakula, courtesy of Human Nature, unless stated.
New planning legislation that aims to boost biodiversity in development projects will come into effect in England in January. Here, Dezeen explains what architects need to know.
What is biodiversity and why does it matter?
In this context, biodiversity usually refers to the variety of all species living within a certain area or ecosystem, including plants, animals, insects, bacteria and fungi.
Each species in an ecosystem has its own impact on the environment, affecting the availability of clean water and air, soil condition, pollination and other food sources and resources. Variety is necessary to keep all these elements in balance, maintaining a stable and resilient world for humans to survive in.
Many parts of the world are experiencing rapid biodiversity loss as a result of phenomena caused by human activities, such as pollution, climate change and habitat destruction. A Queen’s University Belfast study published earlier this year found that 48 per cent of the world’s animal species are experiencing population decline. The Worldwide Fund for Nature claims we are witnessing the sixth mass extinction event in the Earth’s history.
“We live in a time of mass extinction, where an alarming number of species are disappearing and where the impoverished ecology of the planet is having a detrimental effect, not only on our climate emergency, but also on pollination and in the production of food,” Adam Architecture director Hugh Petter told Dezeen. “It is a powder keg.”
Adam Architecture’s work includes Nansledan, an extension to the British city of Newquay that is being designed for the Duchy of Cornwall. The studio says it will surpass the new biodiversity net gain rules by adding “habitat ‘units’ of around 24 per cent and an increase in hedgerow ‘units’ of around 48 per cent”.
What are the new rules?
Construction can be a major cause of direct biodiversity loss, and the new planning rules for England aim to address that. They mandate that new developments deliver a “biodiversity net gain” – that is, a measurably positive impact on biodiversity compared to what existed before.
Specifically, the legislation requires developers to deliver a biodiversity net gain of 10 per cent. To calculate this, the UK government has produced a formula called the “statutory biodiversity metric” for counting what it terms “biodiversity units”, which are gained through work to create or improve natural habitats and lost through building.
As they strive to meet the 10 per cent requirement, developers must prioritise enhancing biodiversity on-site. If they cannot meet the threshold on the site being developed, they will be allowed also to make biodiversity gains on other plots of land, including by purchasing biodiversity units from other landowners.
As a last resort, they must buy “statutory biodiversity credits” from the government, which will use the money to invest in habitat creation. Biodiversity gains delivered must be maintained for a minimum of 30 years by whoever owns the land, bound by legal agreements.
Once planning permission is granted for a project, the developer must submit an evidenced biodiversity gain plan to the local planning authority (usually the council), which will approve it or refuse it. Development can only start once the biodiversity gain plan is approved. If the developer then fails to act in line with their biodiversity gain plan, the planning authority may take enforcement action.
The legislation was initially intended to come into effect for large developments of more than 10 dwellings in November, but that was pushed back to January 2024.
Smaller sites will also be subject to the new rules from April 2024, while major infrastructure projects will have to comply from late November 2025.
What do architects and landscape architects need to know?
Architects and landscape architects will likely play a leadership role in ensuring that projects deliver on biodiversity requirements, working with ecologists and the authorities.
The most important thing, says Petter, is to understand the importance of biodiversity loss as an issue.
“The more architects can take a proper interest in the subject, the better placed they will be to work with the spirit of the new legislation and to think of imaginative ways that the minimum standards can be exceeded,” he said.
“It is crucial to engage with an ecologist as soon as possible,” added RSHP sustainability lead Michelle Sanchez. “It is also beneficial to evaluate the site as soon as you gain access.”
“This enables you to develop your designs based on the existing level of biodiversity, tailoring your strategy to local flora and fauna you particularly would like to support,” she said.
One thing to bear in mind is that the new rules aim to prioritise avoiding biodiversity loss in the first place.
“Avoiding biodiversity loss is the most effective way of reducing potential impacts, and it requires biodiversity to be considered at early design stages,” the guidance states.
To gain planning permission for a project that does cause biodiversity loss but proposes strategies to replace it, developers will need to explain, with evidence, why avoidance and minimisation is not possible.
Will this actually help to boost biodiversity?
The rules will mark the first time biodiversity enhancement has been a planning condition in England. According to University of Oxford researcher Sophus zu Ermgassen, it represents “one of the world’s most ambitious biodiversity policies”, but the exact impact is not yet certain.
But Sanchez is broadly optimistic. “Developers were not inclined to consider biodiversity enhancement in the past,” she told Dezeen.
“Only on projects attaining sustainability certificates such as BREEAM would biodiversity targets be discussed. Even then, it would sometimes more regarded as a tick-box exercise rather than an opportunity to make the building better and more appealing and to reduce the environmental impact that architectural projects have on the planet.”
However, she has warned in an opinion piece for Dezeen that a 10 per cent net gain on its own “is not enough to be able to reduce the negative impact that our way of life has had on biodiversity”.
Designers might have had a hand in causing climate change but they are also key to solving it, according to the chair of the UK Climate Change Committee, who addressed the Design Council’s sustainability conference as it kicked off alongside COP27.
“In the past, we have created great wealth through remarkable design, from Newcomen’s steam engine to the very latest in nuclear technology,” John Gummer, also known as Lord Deben, said at the Design for Planet Festival.
“The trouble is we didn’t recognise that what we were designing actually had within it the ability to destroy.”
Lord Deben spoke at the Design for Planet Festival
Gummer, a Conservative former environment secretary and top climate adviser to the UK government, said this means that designers now have both the responsibility and the unique ability to reimagine products in a way that doesn’t harm the planet and its people.
“Sustainable development demands good design,” he said. “We won’t win the battle against climate change unless we design the solutions.”
“It is good design, which will enable us to use the smallest amount of our resources as is possible, that will enable us to reuse, that will enable us to extend, that will enable us to be flexible, that will enable us increasingly to grow – but to grow in a way that is not at the expense of others and the planet.”
The two-day event in Newcastle aims to encourage and support designers in taking an active role in solving the climate crisis.
This should involve making sustainable low-carbon designs that are still beautiful and easy to use, Gummer argued.
“I don’t think being attractive is something to be ashamed of because what it means is that we create things, which people want to use and want to use properly,” he said.
“One of the fundamentals of beauty is now going to be that they enhance, extend and enable our lives rather than being at the heart of our destruction.”
Designers “fed up” with industry’s lack of action
Gummer is the chairman of the UK’s independent Climate Change Committee, which is responsible for advising the government on emissions targets and monitoring its progress in achieving them.
Last week, Gummer warned that the UK’s attempts to tackle emissions have so far been “appalling“, leaving the country “off track” for meeting its climate targets.
This has been echoed by experts including Cambridge University engineering professor Julian Allwood, who argued that the UK’s net-zero strategy is as unrealistic as “magic beans fertilised by unicorn’s blood”.
The UK’s design industry had a similarly slow start, launching its Design Declares campaign a full two years after architects, engineers and other creative industries declared a climate emergency.
Announced in September as part of London Design Festival, the initiative hopes to unite studios that are “fed up with a lack of industry momentum”.
The Design for Planet Festival is taking place from 9 to 10 November at the V&A Dundee. See Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.
Swedish studio White Arkitekter has been chosen to design the all-electric Velindre Cancer Centre in Wales, which will be built partly with low-carbon materials and follow circular economy principles.
The Velindre Cancer Centre, which is set to be built in Cardiff, will feature lounge spaces, radiotherapy facilities and waiting areas all constructed from timber.
Other bio-based and low-carbon materials proposed for the building include lime and clay renders, which will be used for the interior finishes.
The hospital will be surrounded by a wild landscape
Where timber cannot be used due to clinical requirements, the studio plans to use concrete with ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) – a cement substitute that is a by-product of the iron-making industry.
“The plans for Velindre Cancer Centre represent a huge step forward for healthcare provision in the UK,” said White Arkitekter director Michael Woodford.
“The combination of circular economy principles, low carbon materials and respect for the local landscape will make it the country’s most sustainable hospital, where the environment is designed to support and complement patients’ medical treatment.”
Timber will be used for the interior
Designed as an “elegant, sustainable new cancer centre”, the building is intended to have as little impact on the existing site as possible.
It will be surrounded by a landscape that will be kept wild, with new areas including a community kitchen garden and orchard added to the site.
From here, visitors will walk into a timber-clad entrance area that will have a cafe and restaurant, a patient-transport waiting area and the “young person’s lounge”.
Internal spaces were designed to be easy to reconfigure
The facade of the building was designed to allow internal spaces to be easily reconfigured without the need for structural alterations. This intends to make it easy to adapt the hospital to future innovations in treatment and equipment.
According to its developers, Velindre Cancer Centre will be all-electric and achieve a minimum BREEAM rating of excellent – the sustainability standard’s second-highest rating.
The hospital will use electricity from green energy sources including photovoltaic panels on its roof, while its heating and cooling power will come from ground and air source heat pumps.
The hospital will be constructed partly from bio-based materials
Velindre Cancer Centre will also feature sustainable drainage systems including minimal below-ground pipes, a swale network and a retention pond.
To help reduce the environmental impact of the construction, the developer plans to “reduce site waste through off-site manufacture of components, minimise transportation and create greater efficiencies in the construction and maintenance of the building”.
“We are really pleased to have submitted detailed plans for the Velindre Cancer Centre, which is set to become the UK’s most sustainable hospital,” said Richard Coe, project director at developer and investor Kajima, which is leading the project.
“The buildings are designed with circular economy principles, using low-carbon materials and making a minimal impact on the surrounding countryside,” he added.
It will be located in Wales
Plans for Velindre Cancer Centre were submitted by the Acorn Consortium, which was appointed after a public procurement process that was run by the Velindre University NHS Trust.
Other recent timber designs by White Arkitekter include Gothenburg’s first wooden office building and a timber skyscraper that claims to be the world’s second-tallest wooden tower.
