Camden's officers visit Passivhaus sites

It's been a struggle but I had the impression this last week that I was finally making some headway with Passivhaus in Camden. On Thursday a group of 15 Camden officers visited the Islington Passivhaus development in Highbury (see photo below) and yesterday another group of 15 DIFFERENT Camden officers visited the Camden Passivhaus in West Hampstead (see photo left).

The Passivhaus standard has been used for the last twenty years in Europe, particularly in Germany, to create buildings so energy efficient they don’t need central heating or air conditioning. The standard provides 85% of the energy requirement of a building in terms of energy efficiency. We simply cannot reach zero carbon homes by 2016 as the government has mandated without building on the work that has been done by the Passivhaus Institute in Germany and the architects around Europe who have created the Passivhaus buildings that exist today.

Passivhaus isn't just about new build – it can be used to scope retrofit work as well. That’s lucky because as we all know more than 80% of our buildings will still be standing in 2050. Passivhaus is now an aspiration in Camden Council’s draft Local Development Framework (LDF) which means our planners will be asking developers and architects who plan to work on sites in Camden to think about using the Passivhaus standard from mid-2010 when the LDF becomes policy.

For more on Passivhaus see here.