Sustainable Design
Designing and building sustainably is often an afterthought or at most a “consideration” for many people. “We would like to have an ecological house but ….” Solar panels for water heating are sometimes given the same consideration as a sun roof in a car, “would be nice”.
Renewable energy technologies and type of building materials need to be part of the design package. If they get relegated to “add on” status, then they no longer become useful and may well just appear as expensive optional extras.
One of the essential considerations when designing a home for yourself is “future-proofing” at design stage. We may, for example like to plan for a time in our life when we are not as agile as we are now so that we have fewer steps and good space at ground level or consider possibility of changes in lifestyle enforced by the global economic downturn, where prehaps a space could be easily converted to a workspace for home office or for childcare.
Similarily our design needs to enable our family home to be more resilient to a time when we will no longer afford be dependent on fossil fuels to meet our energy needs.
Picture yourself and you family, where you will be in a decade or so from now and to consider what you need to include at design stage now.
