The Building Research Establishment ( Bre ) Innovation Park

Introduction The Building Research Establishment (BRE) innovation park, which has been started in 2005, is located in Gaston in the UK (Yao and Short, 2013). It provides a space for the demonstration of sustainable buildings, landscape designs and hundreds of innovative low carbon materials and technologies (BRE, 2012a). The goal of these buildings is to achieving a low impact on the environment, but a high quality of life and reducing the CO2 emission (ibid.). One home on the BRE park named Sigma Home (Fig.1) is the first home in the UK designed to Code 5 for Sustainable Homes(BRE, 2012). This house was built by the Stewart Milne Group in 2007, then refurbished by Rexel Energy Solutions and the Stewart Milne Group in 2011(ibid.). The†¦show more content†¦This type of building can be built 45 units per hectare associated with car parking which archives land efficiency (Gaze and Clift, 2008). 53% glass of the building is located on the front and rear walls, in order to provide daylight fo r the various floors (ibid.). The open stair design also maximizes daylight (Gaze and Clift, 2008). The ground floor from the upper floors are separate to create an independent apartment or a home office (ibid.). The design of the building enable occupants to live in an informal lifestyle (Gaze and Clift, 2008). However, the high density of land use means that the size of room is limited. This may influence the credit of Health 4 level (Fig. 2). Moreover, this five-floor building has no lift in it, that means disable people may have difficulty with it. The fabric of the Sigma Home is selected to achieve high energy efficiency in the building, and reduce the energy demand. It is build under a modular basic system using pre-fabricated piles and beams, highly insulated closed panel timber frame walls as well as pre-fabricated timber floor and roof system (BRE,2012b). The key outcomes from this pre-fabricated build system, relating to fabric performance, is on the following aspects: good at sound insulation, good at thermal insulation (BRE,2012c). Furthermore, when compared with the traditional construction systems, this pre-fabricated building system has a benefits of a higher speed (Gaze and Clift, 2008). The Sigma Home has been