The Company was part of the team awarded the Building Magazine’s Sustainable Building 2006 Award for Gibson Mill at Hebden Bridge. This project was completely “carbon neutral”.
The judging panel summary stated:-“Could this possibly be the most challenging design brief ever? Overhaul an isolated, abandoned mill in West Yorkshire to be carbon neutral and handle 100,000 visitors each year without connecting to any national grids using fossil fuels – only renewable resources available on site. By a cunning combination of wood-burning boilers, sheeps’ wool and newspaper insulation, solar energy and hydro power – from the original turbine no less – William Birch and Eco Arc Architects managed to deliver exactly what the National Trust wanted. They were so grateful they called it “..a beacon for how we all lead our lives in a more frugal and sustainable way”.
- Heating by Biomass boiler using timber from the Estate
- Electricity from photovoltaic and hydro generation with
back-up batteries - Drinking water from a spring in the hillside
- Insulation with sheeps’ wool and newspaper
- Waste-treatment with composting toilets and a leach field
- One of the first hand-powered disabled lifts
- Reusing the exisitng building and building materials to
save resources.
