The Bay Trust is an environmental and education charity. Established in 1971, in St. Margaret’s Bay, a small community north-east of Dover, it created and maintained a 6-acre green space for the village called the Pines Garden. With the appointment of a new chairperson in 2001, the Trust began thinking about the long term financial sustainability of the Garden and the income-generating activities that might support it and the Trust’s other work. The development of a conference and training venue at the Pines Garden was identified as a means to pursue many of the organisation’s goals. The facilities would provide revenue for the Trust and contribute to the local community. The design and maintenance would meet the Trust’s sustainability principles and its educational mandate. It would act as an exemplar of green building approaches and technologies. More ambitiously, it was hoped that through its example the building might serve as a catalyst for carbon-neutral rural and urban sustainable development and grass roots responses to climate change.
The result of this initiative is the Pines Calyx Conference and Training Centre. Since its completion in 2006, the centre has attracted a great deal of attention and numerous awards as an outstanding example of sustainable design and construction. The building is exceptional in a number of ways:
High performance: By measures of energy consumption and carbon emissions, the Pines Calyx and its construction process dramatically outperform industry standards. The embodied energy of its building materials (the energy required to produce and transport them) approaches an 80% reduction over conventional construction materials. The building’s operating energy requirement is 66% lower than UK Best Practice. Ambitious to improve on its own performance, the Trust aims for the Pines Calyx to operate on a carbon neutral basis by 2009.
Site specific design: The building is site-specific but designed with approaches and techniques that have broader applicability. The building’s design responds to both the opportunities and constraints presented by the site in creative ways. Located in a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Area of Natural Beauty (AONB) the design worked to blend into its surroundings and provide a net gain of biodiversity. The building is oriented to take advantage of passive solar energy. Materials were sourced locally and in some cases unearthed during the construction process.
A mix of old and new: The building combines old and new technologies to achieve its sustainability goals. Timbrel-vaulting, a roofing technique developed in the late 1800s but fallen into disuse, was revived to create the two domes that serve as the building’s roof. This technique, the structural soundness of which was proven through computer modelling, allowed the use of local clay tiles and greatly reduced the need for reinforced concrete in the building’s construction. The centre’s curving walls were made using the rammed earth technique and chalk unearthed during site preparation. The building’s ventilation, lighting and waste water treatment systems work with natural processes whenever possible, supplemented by technology where necessary.
The Pines Calyx is an example of environmental best practice, both as a building and a development and construction process.
National, regional and local authorities need to consider how to meet pressing climate change commitments. This is likely to include a shift from the current practice in construction to the production of zero-carbon buildings. This shift is evidenced by the development of the Code for Sustainable Homes, a rating system for evaluating the sustainability performance of new construction. Although initially voluntary, a timeline has been created for the gradual rollout of the Code as a mandatory standard. It is envisaged that similar standards will be created for commercial buildings. Given the scale of growth and development outlined in the RES, sustainable construction must promote building design which minimises waste and ensures efficient natural resource use in construction. This approach should be extended during the lifetime of the building, using local or recycled materials from a sustainable source. Small-scale, grassroots organisations have a role in developing solutions to the challenges presented by climate change.
A master plan framework was developed by the Bay Trust in 2001. It established the overall objectives of the project. An interdisciplinary team was formed to work up a design that responded to overlapping objectives in a suitable manner. The project team initially comprised Real Health Ventures (a social enterprise that carries out projects supporting sustainable communities) as well as architects, engineers and specialists in energy use. As the project advanced other members were included on this team, including the building project manager and builder.
During the design process, timbrel-vaulting emerged as a technique that would greatly reduce the need for reinforced concrete and therefore the embodied energy represented by the building’s materials. However, this technique had effectively laid dormant for eighty years. To bring this building method back to life, contact was made with Professor John Ochsendorf from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Building Technologies Programme, an expert in historical building techniques. Advanced computer modelling at MIT proved the structural integrity of the building’s unconventional design. A team from MIT, several Spanish masons with experience with tile masonry and the British building team constructed the timbrel roof in the summer of 2005. The building officially opened in 2006.
The Pines Calyx has been widely recognised as an achievement in small-scale, locally appropriate sustainable built form. It was built on time (18 months) and on budget (£2000/m²). The building represents two components of sustainable communities in a particularly emphatic manner:
Environmental Impact – The Pines Calyx was designed to be an exemplar of green building practice in considering both its local and global environmental impacts. This holds as true for the embodied energy represented in its construction, as for the ongoing operating requirements.
Economy – The development of a conference venue was identified by the Bay Trust as a way to meet its multiple objectives and contribute to the local economy. The Pines Calyx serves as a demonstration project for the sustainable economy and the viability of the social enterprise model of locally appropriate development.
Beyond the building itself, the process of its development also represents a body of best practice. The following skills, behaviours and attitudes necessary to create a sustainable community contributed to its success:
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The Pines Calyx is a successful example of social enterprise, inspired by an entrepreneurial spirit driven by shared values. The project is small-scale in size but ambitious in its scope. The intention behind the project was to achieve multiple objectives simultaneously: to act as an environmental benchmark but also be high performing on measures such as economic performance, community benefit, aesthetic quality, and health.
It has delivered on these objectives in a manner that has stimulated further activity. The project has been successful in its ambition to serve a catalyst role. The design team is currently involved in other rural sustainable enterprise projects in Kent and Sussex that follow a model of development similar to that of the Pines Calyx. Additionally, Kent County Council has identified St. Margaret’s Bay as a low carbon village. The Parish Council has embarked on community-led engagement with sustainability issues and set up working groups on energy, waste and water.
The Pines Calyx was an ambitious project. The design team’s broad goal was to meet the objectives outlined above in fresh ways and demonstrate new technologies and applications in the process. However, with novelty comes risk, as the technologies and approaches being used are untested. To manage risk and allow for creativity, the design and building process was experimental in nature. Rather than having all the solutions worked out from the very beginning, the design team had some novel approaches that needed testing. Tried and tested solutions were held in reserve in case the innovative solution was not possible. The timbrel roof was an example of this approach. The application of this technique was not certain, but as circumstances changed (the connection to MIT, locating masons skilled in the necessary tiling technique to train the British builders, and the construction of a test dome) the technique was adopted. The approach has had a dramatic effect on the look and feel of the building, as well as on meeting the sustainability goals set for the building.
The funding for the building was raised through internal resources such as the sale of assets belonging to the Bay Trust, supplemented by additional loan financing from "Big Invest" (the funding arm of "The Big Issue"). The Bay Trust did not receive resources from public sector funders. While this may have raised other challenges in terms of securing financing for the project, it also freed the team to take risks. It was suggested that the conditions of public funding might have required the design team to take a more risk-averse approach, inappropriate for developing an unconventional building which challenges assumptions of how buildings are supposed to perform.
The creativity witnessed during the design and construction phases of the Pines Calyx was enabled by an interdisciplinary team. The relatively flat hierarchy under which this team worked maximised the opportunities for collaboration. It encouraged each member of the team, from architect to builder, to contribute ideas to improve the building’s design and construction process and to engage and take ownership of the final product. By moving forward on the basis of collaboration and collective problem solving, team members were able to focus their energies on creating solutions and improvements that would allow the structure to be built better and cheaper. This approach allowed the team to minimize the concrete reinforcements in the building and take advantage of design opportunities as they arose, such as including a skylight in the timbrel roof. In essence the team was willing to take risks together, knowing that they would continue to work until they got things right. To protect the builder from the costs associated with experimentation, he was guaranteed a return on his contribution.
Alistair Gould, Chairman, The Bay Trust