Foreword
Bill Dunster is a rare visionary; an entrepreneurial and courageous individual whose belief and commitment to a more sustainable built environment is outstanding. His quest for positive impact has delivered a number of pioneering exemplar projects and developments that demonstrate and prove his thinking. However, the built environment at large has not yet managed to encapsulate and embrace the types of thinking and approaches Bill has promoted and developed on a large scale. As a consequence Bill continues to pursue his relentless quest for greater sustainability in the built environment by finding kindred spirits and organisations to work with him so that his ideas obtain wider impact, and with that more financial sustainability.
We have been very pleased to host two of Bill’s buildings at our BRE Innovation Park on our Garston Site just south of St Albans. One, the Zero Bills Home, takes the concept of sustainability to a place beyond where most people think. The goal of this house is not to minimise negative impacts of the environment, but instead to use the house to be a net generator of positive impacts by combining energy efficiency and renewable technologies, for example. The house is also able to be built by major developers or individual house-building enthusiasts in a cost effective way.
The second building he has built is called the ZEDpod, which is an innovative design aimed at providing low cost and sustainable housing on ‘grey field’ sites – car parks and similar – which have the potential for providing dwellings as well as places for parking.
These two projects, the ZeroBills Home and ZEDpod are typical of Bill’s approach; pushing boundaries and driving innovation ahead of the norm and showing others how the future can be delivered, today.
This book gives insights into Bill’s sometimes uncompromising perspectives on how things and organisations are and how they should be. He shares his ideas, often in significant detail, to show how he thinks housing and developments should be delivered in pioneering and practical ways that meet the sustainable outcomes so needed by our society and our planet.
You may not agree with all he says or proposes, but if you have a passion for a more sustainable future and if you are willing to open your mind to new ways to design and build then, like me, you will enjoy reading Bill’s book. You will be stimulated to try new ways and methods so that a much more sustainable approach becomes the norm. And in doing so better protects our society and environment in a way that creates and enables better economic prosperity through innovation.