Workington property design revealed

An exhibition is being held in Manchester showcasing a new housing concept used on a property featured on Channel 4's Grand Designs.

Developed by Alan Dawson Associates with support from Centre for Construction Innovation North West, Adaptahaus offers an engineered solution to high volume house production and provision.

The concept creates sustainable, high performance homes and buildings, which comply with the current energy and environmental requirements.

Alan Dawson built the first house using the concept as his own, which is located in Workington in Cumbria and featured on the property programme on Wednesday.

ADA started work in a factory in January this year and commenced ground works at the site in the same month. Work subsequently started on site in April and took three and a half weeks to complete.

Alan Dawson, managing director of ADA, said: "We are pleased to be working with CCINW in helping to bring our housing solution to market. The support has given us access to some of the industry's leading architects and developers searching for the latest housing innovations."

Dawson said the Adaptahaus concept is entirely flexible in the arrangement of the room layouts; no internal walls are structural. During the lifetime of the house it can be reconfigured to suit changing family circumstances. He said it is achieved by an accessible void in which tail ends of all services can be connected together, then to be covered over, for subsequent easy access, by attractive duct covers.

Tim Whitehill, project manager at CCINW, added: "In the UK we currently have a deficit of homes and those that are being built need to be more sustainable, to achieve zero carbon standards by 2016. The way in which Adaptahaus is designed and developed ensures that as the family grows, so does the house. This is an exceptional environmental benefit, which has helped the house achieve level 4 of the Code for Sustainable homes.

"By featuring the house on Grand Designs and holding an exhibition at the CUBE, visitors can experience first hand how every component from the solar thermal panels and photovoltaics, to the ground source heat pumps and wind turbines, come together to create a highly sustainable house, which above all functions as a home."

The exhibition is being held until Tuesday 9 November from 4-6pm at The Cube Gallery on Portland Street. Call Tim Whitehill on 0161 295 5076 for more details.