Very occasionally a new product comes onto the market that forces you to sit up and take notice: Adaptahaus is just such a product; functionally elegant, infinitely flexible and amazingly cost-effective.
Adaptahaus, an engineered solution to high volume house production and provision, is the brainchild of Alan Dawson, who has worked in art and architectural metalwork for over 35 years. Indeed, his company, Alan Dawson Associates, has produced innovative, high quality, bespoke metalwork for all types of projects, including Canary Wharf, Bluewater, The New Bullring, Disneyland Paris, Wembley Stadium and the O2 Arena.
Many people will think they have seen ‘similar’ products in the marketplace, but there really is nothing else like Adaptahaus; the perfect solution for sustainable, high performance and affordable houses and buildings, which conforms to current, very stringent, energy and environmental requirements.
Adaptahaus’s distinctive approach places it at some distance from the competition. The house is designed to conform to level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes and, in addition to this, is completely factory pre-fabricated, thus allowing the company to retain quality control and ultimately guarantee a high standard of build and site construction, keeping time spent on-site to an absolute minimum. What’s more, because there are no structural internal walls, the ‘lifetime home’ component of the Code is exemplary.
Of course, a complete lack of structural internal walls means that there can be total flexibility in the arrangement of the room layouts. Consequently, during the lifetime of the house it can be reconfigured to suit changing family circumstances. – so when triplets are born there is no need to move home!
Alan Dawson explains: “With Adaptahaus we aim to raise the mandatory standards for modern housing in a direct response to the Egan Report ‘Rethinking Construction’, which concluded To promote greater construction industry efficiency by better design and modern methods of construction. This engineering alternative to archaic house construction allows for efficient, quality controlled, pre-fabrication and cleaner, quicker build.”
Even though the sustainable approach isn’t unique to Adaptahaus, it is of an uncommonly high standard. Already conforming to level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes, it is aiming to achieve a Passiv Haus standard too; a specific construction standard for buildings that have excellent comfort conditions in both winter and summer, and/or level 6 of CSH; this is defined as an aspirational standard based on zero carbon emissions for the dwelling and high performance across all environmental categories.
Featured on the popular Channel 4 show ‘Grand Designs’, Adaptahaus has already picked up a top industry award, with a beautiful Adaptahaus home, in Branthwaite, near Workington in Cumbria, named Best Technical Innovation at the LABC Northern Building Excellence Awards 2011.
Alan said he now hopes to apply the factory-fitted approach to the development of brand new low-cost environmentally-friendly homes across the country, making them more affordable and more attractive to developers. He commented: “At the moment, with traditional builds you can’t make a profit from affordable homes, but hopefully this will make it more efficient and worthwhile for developers.”
And with a shortage of homes in the UK and the need for more sustainable construction, there is certainly a gap in the market for a product that offers high volume, high quality and highly competitive prices: particularly when you consider that, with the addition of a steel buoyancy chamber below finished floor level, Adaptahaus is even floatable, making it a dream solution for all those flood plains! To find out more, visit www.adaptahaus.co.uk.
