CGIs unveiled of timber framed houses which will develop the Climate Innovation District
Sustainable urban developer Citu has unveiled the first CGIs and detailed designs for its a new timber framed housing system which will be used to develop the Climate Innovation District in Leeds.
The district, which straddles the River Aire, will feature more than 500 low carbon Citu Homes including apartments and houses, alongside manufacturing, leisure, offices and climate resilient public realm in the heart of city’s landmark South Bank regeneration project.
The Citu home will be up to ten times more energy efficient than a standard modern UK home and will be produced in a factory-built technique which will allow Leeds-based Citu to manufacture the homes on a mass-scale to create a climate conscious solution to the UK’s housing crisis.
The home has been developed by Citu in partnership with Leeds Beckett University. A mix of 1, 2, 3 and 4-bedroom homes, based around a Scandinavian model of medium density urban housing, will be manufactured at its purpose-built on-site factory, Citu Works.
Once fully operational, Citu Works has the capacity to produce up to 750 low carbon homes each year for future developments across the UK, reducing the carbon footprint of the construction process by 24,000 tonnes annually.
Chris Thompson, founder and managing director of Citu, said: “The Citu Home, and the wider Climate Innovation District, represent a pioneering new approach to house building in this country which is one of the biggest causes of carbon emissions. The self-build market has been able to design energy efficient homes for a while now, but no one is doing it on a mass-scale and without a big change, the UK is not going to meet its ambitious targets for either new housing or reducing carbon emissions.
“We want to disrupt the construction industry which has fallen behind other sectors in terms of innovation and productivity. With our approach, every new-build housing development could be designed and manufactured in a way that accelerates the transition to low carbon cities. To put it in perspective, if the Government’s target of 300,000 new homes built every year by 2050 were manufactured using our Citu Home design, we could reduce carbon emissions by more than 550 million tonnes compared to conventional methods of construction.”
The first phase of the district, which is already on site and has been part-funded by a £7.7m loan from the Leeds City Region Revolving Investment Fund (RIF), will comprise 121 homes and 191 apartments designed by Swedish architects, White Arkitekter.
A second phase including further apartments and commercial development is designed by Manchester-based Ollier Smurthwaite Architects.
