Hemp Notes

Hemp Architects Lose Contract

Dec 5, 2008 News
Tags: architecture, building, construction, hemp house, real estate

A construction and architecture conference in London next June is slated to feature a house made of hemp. But it now looks like the hemp house isn’t going to be as architecturally distinct as originally planned. The architecture firm that was initially contracted to build it have been dropped in favor of a more off-the-shelf design, and apparently this can mean that the house will be less eco-friendly. As Building Online reports:

Aukett Fitzroy Robinson has been axed as the architect of a pioneering eco-home set to be built using hemp at the Building Research Establishment’s innovation park.

Two months ago, the practice was jointly commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and renewable materials and technology quango, the National Non-Food Crops Centre (NNFCC), for the Hemp House, which aimed to reach level six of the Code for Sustainable Homes using natural materials also including lime.

Now, Aukett’s has claimed its proposal has been replaced with an “off-the-shelf” housebuilder’s design because its plans were not traditional enough for the NNFCC’s liking.
[...]
Andrew Sutton, project architect for Gaunt Francis’s BRE innovation project the Green House, warned it was dangerous to make a housebuilder solely responsible for the design and build.

“This is a hugely missed opportunity,” he said. “A housebuilder will struggle to achieve higher codes without a design team.”

There is, of course, two sides to every coin. Even though a less intricate design could results in having a less than eco-friendly rating, it could make hemp-houses seem more affordable. That in turn could fuel more widespread use of eco-friendly hemp-based building materials. So even though individual houses would be less environmentally friendly than they might otherwise be, there would sure be a lot more of them, meaning that overall, the construction industry becomes more sustainable in the net analysis.

Of course, we’ll just have to wait and see just what an “off the shelf” hemp house looks like. After all, it may simply contain mostly token hemp materials that don’t impact the construction industry all that much at all.