March 17 2025

An innovative development of 75 affordable 'net zero ready' homes in Edinburgh is set to usher in a new phase of low-carbon living.

Granton Station View, delivered by CCG and Anderson Bell Christie Architects on behalf of the City of Edinburgh Council, will now undergo testing to gauge fabric and emissions performance ahead of occupancy.

Part of the Edinburgh Home Demonstrator project the development is being tested by the University of Edinburgh to ensure u-values and air tightness are as expected. This will be followed by a year-long post-occupancy monitoring programme to understand how occupier habits can influence energy efficiency as well as monitoring electricity usage and conducting thermal imaging.

Dr Julio Bros-Williamson, chancellor's fellow in Net Zero Buildings at the University of Edinburgh commented: “The evaluation of the homes is the culmination of a lot of hard work from the stakeholders of this pilot project, from the initial design and energy aspirations to the construction and delivery on site.

"The tests we are conducting will help to verify and provide in-depth knowledge of the initial performance of a sample of flats representative of the whole development."

Lessons learned from the pilot will inform the future delivery of local authority housing. 

12 Comments

#1 Posted by Riddy on 17 Mar 2025 at 13:35 PM

Those flats are honking
Listed building looks nice though

#2 Posted by James Hepburn on 17 Mar 2025 at 15:09 PM

Just looks like a new prison.

#3 Posted by Craigbert on 17 Mar 2025 at 15:46 PM

Actual post-occupancy checks? Wonderful!

#4 Posted by mick on 18 Mar 2025 at 13:23 PM

This irrational drive to net zero is actually drastically reversing the quality of public housing. These proposals are boak inducing.

#5 Posted by Lovely on 18 Mar 2025 at 13:30 PM

That building grouping definitely has a 'Spandau' look about it. I suppose the urban design idea was to respect the listed building by keeping distance, but they've ended up with a strange, disrespectful vibe. These cheap cold looking flats are crammed together, leaving too much empty space around the historic building.

It's also deeply concerning that social housing residents will have their habits monitored like that. Meanwhile, in Glasgow, they push walking and cycling in the rain on 'poor' people instead of investing in proper public mass transit. Smacks of some Norman Tebbit-esque totalitarian nonsense

#6 Posted by Mark on 18 Mar 2025 at 22:49 PM

That's a poor effort from Anderson Bell Christie, it's almost like they chose to thumb their nose at Granton Station. And what's with the "pretend" tracks in the groundscape, when we could really do with real trams or trains…?

#5 - It's good that the H.A. is paying for post-occupancy evaulation, and hopefully the information gathered will be anonymised, rather than being an Orwellian exercise.

#7 Posted by Freshly on 19 Mar 2025 at 08:41 AM

But you have to admit - warden's building looks nice.

#8 Posted by Maggie on 21 Mar 2025 at 11:36 AM

Looks like those are UPVC windows??
Is there anything left to be stripped out of the cost plan? Is there any lower the spec can go??

#9 Posted by Maggie on 21 Mar 2025 at 11:39 AM

Also, what is with the wall separating the housing from Granton Station? It looks historic, but surely placemaking would want to find a way to connect these, not separate with a 15ft wall!!

#10 Posted by Lovely on 22 Mar 2025 at 16:39 PM

It's nice to see such optimism and I don’t mind them checking the building's performance, of course. However, it's more than a bit tiring the never ending diktats coming from private jet types flying in and examining the minutiae of ordinary lives like ant eaters judging ants.

#11 Posted by Mark on 22 Mar 2025 at 20:43 PM

#10 - Unfortunately, the anteaters eat the ants after judging them. I wonder if that's the metaphor you were intending for post-occupancy evaluations?

#12 Posted by Useless Eater on 23 Mar 2025 at 11:23 AM

Just to be clear the study is about 'occupier habits'.

So your extrapolation of the ant analogy may be closer to the money than you think.

This especially so given the private jet brigade's propensity to totalitarian control and destruction of ordinary lives globally.

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