Great Bow Yard: A model for low energy development towards zero-carbon and sustainable housing.

Great Bow Yard:

A riverside sustainable housing project on the edge of the rural market town, Langport (Griffiths 2007).

My 403-Housing class has got me quite fascinated with the hot topic of sustainable housing lately!
I'm currently working my second assignment on the topic of sustainable housing (of course..) and our task is find a sustainable overseas housing project and then prepare 4x display panels for it.

Unfortunately, my poor time management skills have got the better of me and I don't have any completed display panels to put up and show you guys. But luckily, I have done some research and found out some pretty amazing things about Great Bow Yard which I didn't even know existed, let alone possible.

Great Bow Yard is a sustainable housing development located in Langport, Somerset (UK).

It is a unique riverside development of 12 differently sized dwellings divided into two North and East Wing terraces. Why divide the two wings into terraces you ask??

Well, the smart cookie architects at Eco-Homes have deliberately did this because they have designed the terraces orientated towards to the sun and so all houses in this project are highly energy efficient because of this.

Site Plan of Great Bow Yard. Notice how the North and East Wing terraces have orientated differently to best capture the light of the sun from all angles (Griffiths 2007).

The North Wing terrace has these awesome-never-seen-before sunspaces which absorbs the air from outside and actually heats it before releasing it into the dwelling, so minimal artificial heating is required in the chilly season for these dwellings because of the sunspaces.

To add to this, in between the sunspaces are solar panels mounted to once again utilise the sun for water heating. Although it is initially costly to have such solar devices installed, its really gives you more bang for buck in the long-term with all the money you will save in energy and heating costs.

Sunspaces on North Wing Terraces with solar panels mounted in between (Griffiths 2007).


Schmatic section of the North Wing Terrace showing the other sustainable features of the dwellings (Griffiths 2007).

Reference: Griffiths, N. (2007) Great Bow Yard: Anatomy of an Eco-Build, UK: Eco-Logic Books