A news item in The Guardian outlines the city plans to build Britain’s biggest zero-carbon housing project, boasting 600 homes in car-free cycling paradises full of fruit trees and allotments.
The council has selected as lead architect London-based practice Mikhail Riches, the firm behind the acclaimed Stirling prize-winning Goldsmith Street in Norwich. That scheme of 100 council homes showed that the stringent Passivhaus low-energy standard doesn’t have to mean ugly rendered boxes with tiny windows. The beautiful brick terraced houses, with high ceilings, thick insulated walls and fully airtight construction, are set in a cleverly landscaped masterplan, with communal play spaces and the tight-knit neighbourly feeling of a traditional Victorian terrace. But York is aiming to go even further.
Should Guildford be learning from York?
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