This week our guest bloggers are Fuse Architects. They are currently reaching out to all those in the affordable homes community who can assist them in designing a Net Zero Carbon (NZC) modular home. Take the survey if you have thoughts and ideas that will benefit your customers.
Who are we
Fuse Architects are a small (18 person) architects practice based in London Bridge.
We primarily work in the housing sector, mostly affordable housing, and we are significantly adding to the debate, design, delivery and thinking around NZC buildings, especially NZC housing and MMC. We are a carbon neutral company and proud to have a people first philosophy.
We have designed and delivered, over the last three years a number of new build, socially rented projects in the southeast to a NZC standard and are proud to see families living and benefitting from reduced fuel bills. This fits in with our people first philosophy, actively working for better homes, eradicating fuel poverty and being carbon conscious.
Our Modular mission
When we were asked to develop designs for a game changing, affordable, NZC modular housing system that specifically meets the needs of the rented and shared ownership affordable housing sector, we felt excited for the challenge and proud to be leading this project.
Our vision is to create Modular NZC affordable homes that are beautiful, robust, user-friendly, deliverable and viable. To help us achieve that we are asking for input from tenant and resident groups, tenant/resident liaison officers, and anyone working in affordable housing who is involved in the delivery or management of new homes. We want to try and understand what makes affordable housing liveable, usable, and successful for tenants, asset managers and landlords.
Dave Hughes, our design director and the Fuse design team are super excited to use their years of experience in design and their knowledge of NZC and MMC and have been working on designs. To make sure this fits residents’ needs we have collectively formulated a survey that we have sent to housing associations, resident liaison officers and people we know in the housing market. The survey covers various questions, preferences, and design options for both Rented and Shared Ownership new-build housing. At this stage we are focussing solely on houses, not flats.
The Science stuff
The Fuse Modular home will address the climate crisis and affordable housing shortage and work to unlock the mass delivery of affordable, NZC, modular housing.
Modular housing, combined with Net Zero Carbon is the solution to our energy and housing crisis. To summarise the facts,
- Modular homes cost 55% less to heat than the average UK home and 32% less than traditional new builds
- Modular homes are built 50% faster to make from start to finish than bricks and mortar homes
- Building with modular can halve emissions when building a home, cutting the amount of CO2 produced as a result of construction by up to 83%
- Modular home construction is both more efficient and kinder to the environment with substantially less waste, 90% down on materials wastage than traditional builds
- Modular building heavily reduces the amount of transport access needed for building sites, with 80% fewer vehicle movements to sites and therefore far less local disruption and pollution of the environment
Next Steps – Get in Touch
We have launched the survey to a wider audience and to register your input and take part please contact [email protected]
It takes just six minutes to complete, runs until 8th March and we are keen to hear from as many housing people as possible.
Once we have the results, we will be releasing the design and will be arranging a series of workshops to showcase the results. We will then be working with affordable partners and our delivery partner to roll out a series of pilot sites.
