Welcome to
Constructive Individuals on the web!

Constructive Individuals is a practice based in York, UK, which provides a wide range of services based around the design of buildings and spaces. Established in 1985, the practice has been involved in a very wide variety of projects and has developed a range of skills which go well beyond most people's experience of architecture.

We have been involved in building design, community consultation, training, project management and have written guides and manuals for publication. We have worked with clients from five years old to retired.

The purpose of this site is to give you some idea of our range of skills and the sort of projects we have been involved with. Explore, and contact us if you'd like to know more.

Phil Bixby
BA Dip Arch Architect
     

April 2008
What's Going On?
   

The York Housing Association scheme continues towards completion. I said in the last news update that I'd put the results of preliminary airtightness testing on here, so here we go.

Airtightness testing was only recently introduced as a Building Regs requirement, with a maximum allowable leakage of 10m3/m2/hr at 50Pa pressure. It's a pretty good indicator of build quality, and it's no surprise that many contractors have struggled to achieve this, with some high-profile failures.

We've been aiming at the much more stringent German "Passivhaus" standard of 1m3/m2. The test results - on two houses where the air-sealing is still far from complete - were 1.3 and 1.8 respectively. We should get them within 1m3/m2 by completion, and are well chuffed.