multimax: affordable homes within planetary boundaries
Everyone should have access to a decent and secure home that doesn’t cost the earth. But can the Government’s mission to deliver 1.5 million new homes be done in a way that keeps us within 1.5°C — the scientifically and politically established ‘safe limit’ to avert the worst impacts of climate change and preserve a liveable planet?
Continuing with business-as-usual delivery, housing alone will consume the UK’s entire carbon budget for meeting 1.5°C before 2050. Furthermore, it could lock-in the UK’s over-reliance on a small number of financialised volume house builders, whose track record for prioritising the extraction of profits over providing high-quality affordable homes has contributed to less than 2% of the public trusting them to deliver the homes people want or need.
Another way is possible.
Introducing MultiMax. Developed together with Waugh Thistleton Architects, our MultiMax system – multi-storey, maximum-timber – demonstrates how homegrown timber can be safely and affordably used in place of high-carbon construction materials like concrete and steel. Through a combination of systemised design and digital production in neighbourhood factories, and through the community stewardship of land and homes, a new “mass local” way of building is possible.
MultiMax offers a “full stack” homegrown timber housing offer to support the gentle densification of existing neighbourhoods by unlocking the hidden abundance of well-located urban infill sites to provide homes and social infrastructure precisely where they are needed most. The system achieves this in a way that meets the forthcoming Future Homes standard, and can be tailored to meet Passivhaus standards. It also meets the operational energy targets set by the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard — an innovative new standard for setting operational and embodied carbon performance within limits which allow the UK built environment to stay within its own allocation of remaining carbon budget and limit warming to 1.5°C. It achieves all of this at a build cost that is comparable to conventional high-carbon, masonry construction.
MultiMax represents one example of a growing movement across the UK and beyond, of “entrepreneurship for the common good” – seeking and creating responses to the challenge of how we can deliver good homes that don’t cost the earth. Our hope is that together, how we do housing can generate a more life-affirming relationship with land, materials and each other. The system is offered as an open-source resource for other neighbourhoods, communities, councils, and not just for-profit developers to adapt and adopt for their own areas. Learning from our own prototype test site in Bristol, we know this movement could spread – shifting from the margins to the mainstream of housing delivery in the UK. You can view the MultiMax reports at the following links.
MultiMax Playbook
The research behind MultiMax and the story of WeCanMake’s real-world demonstration sites can be found here. The Playbook explores how the system unlocks infill sites for affordable homes, and how using homegrown timber can reconnect construction with local materials and culture, while fostering stewardship. You can find the Playbook here.
MultiMax Pattern Book
The design principles for MultiMax residential developments can be found in the Pattern Book, providing a comprehensive methodology for creating sustainable and resilient low-rise timber housing. You can find the Pattern Book here.
