Overall Winner 2011

SHRUBHILLWORKS CO-HOUSING, LEITH, EDINBURGH

ShrubhillWorks adapts a brownfield site to create a Cohousing community that encourages its residents to embrace a more sustainable lifestyle, forming a stronger bond with their surrounding natural environment and neighbours.

Communal facilities provide residents with access rather than ownership, reducing consumption and encouraging social interaction. The organisational structures necessary in this community will also benefit the development, and support monitoring of local endangered species and habitats.
Combined with the principles of Permaculture, the master plan is geared towards the utilisation of nature’s ‘goods and services’, leading to an affordable, low impact, diverse place to live.

Dwellings are designed to include passive green techniques, including solar buffers, natural ventilation and an on-site wastewater treatment plant, providing the site with grey water whilst simultaneously creating a new habitat. Existing buildings on-site are renovated and retrofitted, reducing the impact on resources.

The site also extends the region’s wildlife corridors and sustainable transport networks through the adaptation of an adjacent railway line. Biodiversity within the site will be nurtured by large green spaces and designated wild areas, a bat spiral and bee-keeping on the rooftop garden.

Judges' Comments

This project integrates community, energy, materials, water, food and biodiversity, transforming a run-down inner city site into a water sensitive urban village with permaculture at its heart. Integration comes in the form of waste and wastewater treatment and rooftop gardens. The site includes plenty of wildlife habitat which links to the wider ecological network and species, including bats, birds and bees.