R E A L L H o u s i n g R e s e a r c h
1
REALL HOUSING RESEARCH: RICCARTON ECOVILLAGE AND
LIVING LABORATORY
Susan Roaf
1
& Gary Clark
2
1
REALL Research Direct, Built Environment, Heriot Watt University, Scotland
2
REALL Project Director, Built Environment, Heriot Watt University, Scotland
Abstract
The scale and magnitude of the challenges we face in the built environment appear to
increase alarmingly year on year as a result of soaring populations, resources depletion,
pollution, unstable economies and climate change. The recent catastrophic failures of
many built environment systems across increasing scales and with greater intensities
and consequences points to the need for new approaches to researching ways forward
in creating more resilience in their physical and social structures. In the face of more
extreme weather, increasingly polluted ecosystems and the growing fragility of
economies, buildings are consequently required to ‘do more with less’. Regulatory
pressure is growing in response to wide ranging drivers to produce a new generation of
cost efficient, low carbon, resilient buildings. The growing dependence on models to
shape such buildings is also being called into question as real buildings designed with
them often fail to replicate in practice the modelled performance predicted. There is a
clear need for ‘whole system’ research facilities that produces correct, and validated,
results in studies of individual issues, both hard and soft, and of the complex
relationships and feedback systems extant between buildings, technologies and
occupant behaviours. This paper describes the Riccarton Ecovillage And Living
Laboratory (REALL) being designed at Heriot Watt University to provide such a Standard
Test Facility. The theoretical approach that underpins the development of REALL is
presented and ambitious aims to achieve optimised solutions through related research
are defined. Stakeholders in the development of the project include researchers, policy
makers, designers, occupants, the construction and energy industries and the public.
Keywords:
Housing, climate change, resource depletion, optimised design solutions,
behaviours, construction, energy, living laboratory.
Introduction: The Challenges
The scale and magnitude of the challenges we face in the built environment appear to
increase alarmingly year on year as a result of soaring populations, resources depletion,
pollution, unstable economies and climate change. The recent catastrophic failures of
many built environment systems across increasing scales and with greater intensities
and consequences points to the need for new approaches to researching ways forward
in creating more resilience in their physical and social structures.
Over 40 years ago authors were warning of the risks posed by growing populations
within the limited ecosystems of the planet (Meadows et al., 1972; Turner, 2008). Again
and again we have seen this crucial issue of system capacities being exceeded for water
resources (Glennon, 2009), fossil fuels (Kjell, 2012; Campbell, 2005) and Food (Brown,
2011). We have seen buildings fail en masse to protect their occupants from dying of
heat stroke in Europe in August 2003. In 2005 we saw a whole city fail as its citizens
were abandoned to die in the face of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
On the 1
st
August 2012 power was restored to Indians after back-to-back power cuts left
680m people without power across the northern and eastern parts of the country on a
scale last seen in 2003 when the whole Eastern seaboard of the USA lost electrical
