Wales has launched a competition to design eco-efficient homes that can also compete on price with standard-built housing.

The architectural design contest, which is open to any architectural practice, is seeking high-quality designs for a two-bedroom starter home and a three-bedroom family home.

Launched by the Welsh Assembly Government and Blaenau Gwent Council in association with the Building Research Establishment (BRE), the winning designs will be built at The Works:Ebbw Vale by United Welsh Housing Association. The Works is a sustainable regeneration project that’s transforming a 200-acre steelworks site into a £350 million mixed-use development.

Funding for the construction of the two houses will be provided by the Assembly Government’s Heads of the Valleys strategic regeneration programme. Once built, the sustainable homes will serve as a showcase for energy-saving building techniques and technologies and a model of how highly energy-efficient homes can be built at no additional cost.

The design competition is aimed at creating the Welsh Passive House — combining the principles of the highly efficient PassivHaus low-carbon building standards, pioneered in Germany with the higher levels of the Code for Sustainable Homes in Wales.

PassivHaus homes rely on extremely high standards of insulation and require minimal energy for space heating and hot water.

The winning designs must satisfy the CSH level 5 standard — aspiring towards level 6 — use local sustainable materials, find innovative solutions for electricity reductions. In addition, construction costs — excluding land costs — should be comparable with more traditional methods of building.

“The design competition is an exciting challenge for architectural practices to come up with some innovative highly sustainable designs that will be examples of best practice that can be replicated elsewhere in Wales,” said Leighton Andrews, Deputy Minister for Regeneration. “A particularly important aspect of the competition will be to demonstrate to the construction industry that highly energy-efficient homes need cost no more than standard homes to build.”

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