Advanced materials vs. the housing crisis
Concretene’s COO Mike Harrison talks to Dr Liam Britnell, CTO of Vector Homes, about how advanced materials can help alleviate the UK’s housing crisis.As the new government set out its plans to address the UK’s housing crisis, we sat down with Dr Liam Britnell from Vector Homes to talk about advanced materials and innovation in construction.
The problem: the UK has an acute shortage of affordable and social housing. According to a report this year by urban think-tank Centre for Cities, the average house in England costs more than 10 times the average salary, while vacancy rates are below 1 per cent. Demand is massively outstripping supply.
So, alongside planning reform and changes in policy, what can innovation – and specifically nanomaterials - offer to speed up the process of delivering the new homes we so desperately need?
At Concretene, we are partners of the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre at The University of Manchester, an institute that supports new businesses trying to commercialise products based on advanced materials engineering.
One of our fellow partners is Vector Homes, a company that uses nanomaterials to optimise a new kind of modular housing that will provide low-cost, highly energy-efficient homes, with reduced embodied and whole-lifecycle carbon, potentially transforming the house-building industry.
While some of the tech is state-of-the-art – eg. graphene-enhanced sensors to monitor and adjust temperature, moisture and air quality – other features are rooted in a more traditional sense of ‘reuse and recycle’. For example, low-grade sheep wool makes a highly efficient natural fibre insulation, but because the value of a fleece is less than it costs to shear a sheep, much of the 250,000 tonnes generated in Europe each year goes straight to landfill. Vector transforms this abundant, renewable resource into a cheap, effective housing material.
Sounds simple. But construction is a complex, highly competitive world of regulations, insurance, fine margins and a reputation for resistance to change. The materials revolution only happens if accompanied by the requisite political and commercial will.
As we at Concretene continue to develop our admixture for lowering the carbon footprint of concrete, we’re always looking for partnerships and like-minded innovators with whom we can work and deliver the infrastructure of the future. Listen to the interview to find out more.
www.vectorhomes.co.uk