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ACORN GREEN
PHOTOGRAPHY OF CUBIS BRUTON TREE PLANTING WITH WANDERLANDS, SOMERSET
THIS IS INTELLIGENT HOUSEBUILDING
Acorn Green represents our unique holistic approach to carbon reduction and our commitment to creating inspiring new communities which fulfil the current and future needs of our residents’ whilst respecting and protecting our environment.
We pride ourselves on each Acorn development being individually and intelligently designed and built to the highest quality - our vision is to ensure that everything we do has a positive impact and contribution to the local surroundings, creating a true sense of place and an inclusive community where residents and nature can grow and flourish long after we complete our role in the building of the scheme.
Our unique selling point in the green housebuilding industry is that we look at each site individually and holistically, so in contrast to a lot of other housebuilders where a one size fits all approach to carbon reduction suits their work, we are totally bespoke. Our other key USP within this is our commitment to re-using existing buildings – as Carl Elefante, former president of the American Institute of Architects once said - “the greenest building is the one that already exists” – studies have suggested that it takes between 10 and 80 years for a new building that is 30 per cent more efficient than an average-performing existing building to overcome the negative climate change impacts related to the construction process. We’re unique in this sense – many other UK housebuilders wouldn’t take on the challenges that we embrace with open arms. This is something we’ve been doing for many years and Acorn Green will strive to help residents easily understand what green living really means from an Acorn perspective.
Acorn Green however, goes beyond our design principles and we want this to be inherently part of our people culture too. From recycling, to switching over to renewable energy providers and the newly introduced cycle-to-work scheme, we are always looking for new ideas to get this embedded in our Acorn culture.
Carl Elefante - FAIA
PHOTOGRAPHY OF HOPE HOUSE
Our design process
Incorporating Acorn Green into our design process has become second nature - we work closely with external design teams at all stages to make sure they understand our green agenda. We will tap into new ideas that our consultants bring to the table and bring in lessons learned from our other projects to guide the design process; we are privileged to have vast knowledge and experience within Acorn that we can tap in to, in both projects and people.
The benefit of an Acorn site is that you can stand back and take a more complete view of sustainability; each site is different and that’s part of the beauty of an Acorn designed home.
Committed to a green future
The exciting part of a sustainable process is that it is forever evolving, and investments in the industry mean that there are more and more innovative technologies that are enabling us to move faster than the government guidelines. We are committed to working on a timeline with our consultant partners Energist on how we become a net Carbon Zero company as soon as realistically possible, and we’ve partnered with a carbon offsetting company, Wanderlands, to offset any residual carbon from our offices and development sites.
