Pioneering pod company, Elements Europe, is celebrating after scooping Interbuild’s Offsite Solutions New Product Award for the second time in three years; this time for its affordable housing solution Ty Unnos™.

Manufactured from low-density sustainable Welsh timber, Ty Unnos™ takes its name from the Welsh for ‘House Overnight’. Available up to three storeys, the product not only offers one of the shortest build programmes of any affordable housing solution on the market, but in delivering Level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes as standard, it is also one of the most environmentally efficient.
Ty Unnos™ is demonstrated for the first time at Interbuild 2008 within a new Show feature, The Village, which features cutting-edge offsite solutions in retail, housing and hotel accommodation. In keeping with its name, Elements’ two-storey exhibit was placed into position and fully furnished within 24 hours of its arrival on site at Interbuild, which runs until Thursday this week at Birmingham’s NEC.

In selecting Ty Unnos™ for the award, the judges commented: “This is a really innovative volumetric building with great green credentials, being made entirely from low grade timber, sourced and processed in Wales. The thin timber creates a really strong product.”

Aside from the timber used in the construction of Ty Unnos™, which is typically employed in non-structural applications like pallets, packaging and fencing, and is therefore inherently ‘green’, the product is proven to passive house standards and offers exceptional air-tightedness, so it is easily upgradable to Code Level 5.

Darren Richards, Chief Operating Officer for Elements Europe comments: “At Elements we firmly believe that affordability and environmental performance should not be exclusive from one another, and we place a great deal of energy, resource and investment into keeping at the forefront of industry innovation. We’re naturally thrilled that our efforts have paid off with our award at Interbuild; though we have a number of other new environmental initiatives in development and look forward to making further announcements soon.”

Alongside Ty Unnos™, The Village is also Elements’ official launch platform for Roompod™ – the only fully functional, load-bearing ‘whole room’ pod product currently on the market.
Already attracting interest from the budget hotel, student and care sectors, Roompod™ is a stackable, light steel-framed solution, and is delivered to site fully kitted-out with all fixtures, fittings and utilities in situ. Simply craned into place, up to 12 rooms can be built per day, up to six storeys high, without the need for separate structural walls, floors and ceilings.

Darren Richards comments: “Our double presence within The Village gives a taster of what can be achieved across commercial and residential builds using the latest offsite technology – it not only provides a platform through which to highlight the environmental benefits of building in this way, but we’ve also had the opportunity to provide a ‘real-time’ demonstration of just how quickly results can be achieved. Though Ty Unnos™ and Roompod™ are very new to the market we have already received significant interest and look forward to rolling both solutions out across a number of new developments over the coming 18 months.”

Email: rachael.collinge@marketecturegroup.co.uk