The design for Derwenthorpe, York draws on the architectural legacy of the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust century-old model village at nearby New Earswick. The primary objective has been to create a high-quality public realm with well-defined street frontages and pedestrian friendly spaces.
Derwenthorpe seeks to create a mixed income, mixed tenure community of high quality, eco-friendly, energy efficient homes that are well managed and maintained. All homes will have private gardens and will be designed to ‘Lifetime Homes’ standards. Priority will be given to pedestrians and there is extensive amenity space, in the form of parkland which will be an integral part of the development.
The basis of the sustainability strategy is a highly efficient building fabric with good ‘U’ values, low air permeability and carefully controlled thermal bridging. Houses will have their heating and hot water from a bio mass-fired district heating network. The development is set to achieve Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4 with 5 properties completed to Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5. This means they have achieved a prescribed minimum performance on each of the nine categories of sustainable design.
York has a shortage of family housing and the price of homes also contributes to families moving out of the city. The partnership between Joseph Rowntree and David Wilson Homes seeks to address this at the exemplar Derwenthorpe scheme.