Lord Prescott of Kingston-upon-Hull was among more than 300 people attending an event to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the BRE Innovation Park in Watford. The event included the launch of the Park’s latest project, the Wienerberger e4 brick house which will be the first home to be assessed under BRE’s new Home Quality Mark.
The event marked a return to the site for John Prescott who as Deputy PM in June 2005 had officially opened the Park – now home to some of the world’s most sustainable buildings, landscape designs and many hundreds of innovative low carbon products, materials and technologies.
Since Lord Prescott’s first visit, more than 60,000 people have toured this ground breaking demonstration community, including the Prince of Wales, Prime Minister David Cameron and the Premier of China Li-Keqiang.
‘To date the Park has featured 18 unique projects. These represent diverse and collaborative approaches to sustainable design, construction and refurbishment which have pushed the boundaries of current knowledge and practice and ultimately driven change across the built environment.’ says Director of BRE Innovation Parks Network Dr David Kelly. ’
The e4 brick house
During his visit Lord Prescott officially opened the Park’s most recent development, the e4 brick house. Built by Europe’s largest brickmaker Wienerberger, and designed by global engineering and design consultancy ARUP, the e4 house is so called because it emphasises the four principals of energy, economy, environment and emotion. The house adopts a fabric first approach to minimising the energy needs and is the first home to pilot BRE’s new Home Quality Mark which will be open for registrations in October.
‘It is great to see a new home like e4 on the market that’s affordable to build and run, quick to construct, promotes health and wellbeing and has a minimum adverse impact on the environment’ said Lord Prescott ‘A great combination of features that couldn’t come at a better time when housing supply is at crisis point’
BRE Innovation Park Network www.bre.co.uk/innovationpark
