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2009 was a busy year for us here at Axis Design. So busy in fact that we neglected to tell you about it and haven’t updated the blog since the summer! Hopefully we’ve more than made up for it with the printing of the first Axis Design newspaper, covering numerous projects we’ve been involved with during the last couple of years.

You can pick yourself up a copy if you come and see us at the Designed Environment West Midlands Design Fair on the 25th February, where we’ll be teaming up with the guys at Slider Studio to talk about our consultation work using advanced digital tools. We’ve been using another example of an advanced digital tool to make the newspaper thanks to the new service launched by http://newspaperclub.co.uk.

Here are a few excerpts along with some images from the paper; you can also download a PDF copy of the full newspaper here: Axis Design newspaper

Birmingham Municipal Housing Trust

Axis Design Architects continue to play a key role in Birmingham’s latest housing developments. As one of the architects for the first two phases of the initiative to allow local authorities to build new homes, Axis Design have developed proposals for 5 sites across the city that will set the standard for the future of housing in Birmingham. Each scheme has been designed to deliver Code for Sustainable Homes level 4 and with the help of code assessors Brooks Devlin we have provided a renewable energy strategy that recommends the use of photovoltaic energy which could benefit from the recently announced Feed in Tarrif (more images available on our flickr page)

The quality of supported housing for the 55+ market in the UK is a topic we’ve been discussing here at Axis Design a lot over the last few years. This year’s brief for the British Homes Awards gave us the opportunity to explore some of our ideas and show how we believe the industry could turn to existing housing solutions from the holiday home sector combined with improved landscape and infrastructure to meet the aspirations of retiring baby boomers.

Here’s our response to the Lifetime Homes challenge set by the British Homes Awards 2009 (click images for full size):

Eco Lodge Parks 

Asset rich but cash poor; dire pension and savings forecast; inheritance tax worries; probably working until our seventies. The kids could help but they are mortgaged to the hilt and need help with childcare and top up fees.

Today’s reality for the youth of the 60’s, nurtured on the NHS, fashioned on the Mini, honed by world travel, inspired by JFK, rock & roll heavy….   their 21st century living is essentially about affordability and equity release creating third age choices and financial security.

What if we could sell up the family home, spend one third of the proceeds on a third age home, then invest the rest, buy a villa in Goa, or help the family?

In eco-Lodge Parks you can….. and even generate letting income over the next 20 years.

Thanks to Jez Sanders from Red Landscape for collaborating with us on this work. Although we didn’t make the shortlist we’re still very pleased with the concept and hope to get the opportunity to develop it in the future.

(see the full entry for further text)

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Today sees the official opening of the passive solar spaces we designed on behalf of Waterloo Housing for the latest phase of Brandwood End in Kings Heath. Thanks to funding assistance from Birmingham City Council we’ve been able to provide two storey glazed spaces to the rear of ten houses of mixed tenure. Designed as flexible spaces alongside the kitchen/dining room we believe that the life style benefits of sun spaces are equally as important as the energy/economic benefits.

Like our work in the refurbishment field, we’ll also be doing extensive post-occupancy monitoring of these properties over the next 3 years. We gave a short presentation at Ecobuild this year covering all these issues and the slides are available online.

Following a busy month of award shortlists, we’re delighted to announce that ecoterrace has won Building magazine’s ‘99% Campaign Award for Refurbishment’.

The project was also a finalist in the CIH Housing Awards and Inside Housing magazine’s Sustainability Awards.

Queens Road was also a finalist in the Inside Housing magazine award, shortlisted under ‘Sustainable smaller social housing project of the year’

The first properties proposed as part of our Blurton masterplan document are nearing completion. Here’s an image of the bungalows at the centre of the courtyard.

Our Ecohomes ‘excellent’ rated housing designed for Kier Group and Black Country Housing has been completed.

More photos and the original sketch designs are available here: Queens Road

The first two ecoterrace properties are now complete!

91 London Road and 63 Booth Street were officially opened with the help of renowned ecologist David Bellamy. If you ‘d like to come along and visit the houses we’re having a number of open days during the next few weeks. Full details can be found on the project web site: ecoterrace.co.uk

May 12th will see the official opening of the first two properties at a specially organised launch event. After that 63 Booth Street and 91 London Road are being opened for public viewing over several days in May 2008.

If you’d like to take a look and discuss the project with team members, feel free to visit us on one of the following dates:

91 London Road (map link) and 63 Booth Street (map link) will be open on the following days:

Saturday 17th May, 10am - 2pm
Tuesday 20th May, 10am - 3pm
Wednesday 21st May, 10m - 3pm
Tuesday 27th May, 10am - 3pm
Wednesday 28th May, 10am - 3pm
Saturday 31st May, 10am - 2pm

The first two properties on our ecoterrace project are almost complete. Visit our dedicated web site for more info: http://ecoterrace.co.uk

If you’d like to hear more about the project we’ll be presenting the project and taking part in a discussion panel at Think08 on May 7th.

Here’s the latest image from our project in Stourbridge. This shot shows the way each of the properties has a slightly different relationship with the street, depending on the paving and the door position.

Construction should be completed soon. We’ve also submitted the project for a Building For Life award - we hope to get a gold standard result…

(more details on Rob’s blog: no2self.net)