As cities across Europe sweltered under a heatwave in June 2026, Professor Michael Janoschka was focused on a longer-term problem: how to make homes affordable and energy-efficient in a continent facing a housing crisis.

Prof Janoschka has spent much of his career studying how rising house prices, property speculation and urban inequality are reshaping European cities. 

Today, as professor of regional science at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, he is leading an international team investigating how housing affordability and energy poverty can be tackled together rather than as separate policy challenges.

“Europe has an ageing, often energy-inefficient housing stock,” says Prof Janoschka. “Housing affordability is not only about rent or mortgage payments, but also about heating and, more and more, cooling.” For him, rising prices and energy use are part of the same crisis.

House prices have soared in the past decade, and almost 10% of EU citizens face a 'housing cost overburden' – spending more than 40% of disposable income on rent, mortgage and utilities. Meanwhile, nearly 10% of Europeans cannot keep their homes warm enough, and summertime cooling is a growing concern too.

Rethinking policy with communities

As part of the EU-funded PREFIGURE project, researchers, municipalities and housing organisations from eight European countries have joined forces under Prof Janoschka’s lead to explore the link between housing and energy, and how they can be made both more affordable and inclusive.

Together, they have studied 16 local initiatives involving the provision of affordable housing and energy for vulnerable groups, including lower-income households, older people, refugees and people without a home.

 

'Housing affordability is not only about rent or mortgage payments, but also about heating and, more and more, cooling.' Prof Michael Janoschka, PREFIGURE

They looked at what municipalities, local organisations and residents are already doing to tackle the pressures of housing affordability and energy poverty in their neighbourhoods.

“My view is that affordable housing and energy, which are usually treated as separate policy fields, should be thought of together,” says Prof Janoschka. The researchers argue that housing should be viewed as more than simply providing a roof over people’s heads. It also shapes health, economic wellbeing and social cohesion. 

To understand how widespread these challenges are, the researchers also surveyed about 30,000 households across Europe. They are now analysing the survey results to understand how successful local approaches could be adapted elsewhere through 'learning communities' comprising networks of residents, public officials and researchers.

Solutions on the ground

The German city of Karlsruhe, for example, has run a co-operative housing programme for 20 years, offering renovation subsidies and giving homeless people access to vacant apartments, alongside the creation of energy-efficient homes. According to Prof Janoschka, the programme has significantly reduced homelessness. 

The researchers are now exploring whether these lessons can transfer to Thessaloniki in northern Greece, which has 35,000 vacant homes. 

“The housing cost overburden in Greece is the highest in the EU, and a substantive part of that is energy costs,” says Meriç Özgüneş, housing policy co-ordinator at Housing Thessaloniki, the city’s social rental agency. 

The agency has recently been renovating 40 long-empty homes for vulnerable communities, with people moving in since last December. It aims to add 60 more within three years and hundreds more after that. 

“The PREFIGURE work has provided us with inspiring stories and a deeper understanding of potential strategies and financing approaches,” says Özgüneş. The Thessaloniki scheme offers tenants both long-term social rental contracts and energy-upgraded homes.

In Barcelona, another initiative – WikiHousing – is taking community participation a step further. It brings together young people aged 18 to 30 from diverse backgrounds to work alongside architects and builders to help design, prefabricate and eventually manage energy-efficient public housing.

As they learn practical construction skills, the project is also creating an open-source model that other cities can adapt to develop affordable, low-carbon homes.

Inequality, energy and place

While the team led by Prof Janoschka has focused on identifying successful local housing initiatives, another European research team has been investigating why many vulnerable communities continue to miss out on affordable, energy-efficient housing.

Dr Anne Kantel, an energy policy researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research in Karlsruhe, co-ordinates the EU-funded HouseInc project.

Working with local authorities, researchers and community organisations across Europe, the team is exploring how housing inequality is shaped by energy costs, market forces, policy, climate change and access to transport, public services and social support.

“When we talk about housing policy, we’re not just talking about any housing, but quality housing related to people’s wellbeing,” says Dr Kantel.

The team ran four case studies involving marginalised groups from Eastern Europe: migrants in Germany, Roma communities in Czechia and Romania, and Ukrainian refugees in Italy. 

Through interviews, focus groups and hands-on trials, residents worked with local authorities, NGOs and researchers to discuss potential innovations.

The researchers have also been surveying almost 15,000 households across eight countries to map where these gaps in housing and energy access are most acute, and building an atlas cataloguing existing fixes, such as social rental agencies or community-based renovation schemes, that other cities could draw on.

Falling through the cracks

The research found that these marginalised communities often face structural discrimination.

Roma people frequently lacked official residency status or lived in self-built homes on land they did not own, raising the risk of displacement. Meanwhile, Ukrainian refugees in Italy struggled with short-term funding that prevented them settling, finding work or integrating. 

In both cases, homes often lacked energy efficiency measures, forcing tenants to rely on old electrical or heating appliances.

 

'Measures can’t just stay at the household level, they need to go to the building and neighbourhood level.' 
Dr Anne Kantel, HouseInc

“A recommendation that came out of this is that there needs to be some stability and longevity in such programmes,” says Dr Kantel. “Local authorities also need support and training to assess local needs and help people in targeted ways.”

In the Vogelstang district of Mannheim, Germany, home to many residents with a migrant background and living in energy-inefficient buildings, people reported struggling to heat and cool their homes affordably. However, many in the municipality have not picked this up as a separate problem. 

For Dr Kantel, that finding is revealing. It shows how issues like energy poverty can slip through the cracks when departments work in silos, without collaboration and exchange. “In Europe, I think there’s a need to redistribute resources better and invest in local capacity building,” she says.

Integrated housing strategy

Dr Kantel’s broader argument is that municipalities need to consider a whole area’s buildings and infrastructure, not just individual homes, when planning housing strategy. 

“The housing becomes part of the area’s infrastructure,” she says. “Measures can’t just stay at the household level, they need to go to the building and neighbourhood level.”

Ultimately, the two research teams reach the same conclusion: making homes greener will not automatically make them fairer. 

Housing policies need to be designed alongside the people they are intended to help, so that Europe’s green transition does not leave its most vulnerable citizens behind.

Author: Gareth Willmer. This article first appeared in Horizon magazine.

From an ingenious home with guest annexe attached, to a micro house in Tokyo that opens like a shell, and a home for both cats and humans – here are 10 innovative Japanese dwellings, writes Hannah Newton.

The most inventive homes in Japan are modest in scale, but ambitious in what they aim to do. Architects there are offering "the most precise and inventive thinking about living now", according to François-Luc Giraldeau, editor of the book A House in Japan: Lessons in Living.

"That matters today because much of the world is facing the same questions Japan has been dealing with for decades," he tells the BBC. "How to live well with less space, fewer resources and greater environmental pressure."

And there is a deceptive simplicity about the best Japanese dwellings. "What looks minimal is usually the result of exacting decisions about proportion, material, light and joinery – there is an enormous amount of craft beneath what appears effortless. Good design is not about having more; it's about making what exists work harder." Below are 10 Japanese homes that reflect these skills and create solutions.

Nacasa & Partners Inc/A House in Japan, gestalten. Image: Nacasa & Partners Inc/ A House in Japan, gestalten.

1/ Love2 House, Tokyo

"How much space does one truly need to live well?" asks architect Takeshi Hosaka of his practice and home, a compact nest with a footprint no larger than 10 sq m (108 sq ft) in Tokyo. This tiny site becomes the creative impetus for a home containing all the essentials: bathing, music, food, study and reflection. The house is defined by tall twin curved concrete shells that open to the sky, letting winter light flood in. Inside every surface has a purpose, with shelves carved into walls and counters extending outward. For Hosaka and his wife, their home encompasses "the infiniteness of small things".

Ooki Jingu/A House in Japan, gestalten. Image: Ooki Jingu/ A House in Japan, gestalten.

2/ Building Frame House, Tokyo

Open plan takes on a whole new meaning in this design – inside, the living space is entirely open from top to bottom. IGArchitects removed the whole concept of walls in favour of floating floors as building blocks that separate living areas. The couple who live here "have learnt its rhythm", Giraldeau tells the BBC. "With horizontal space so scarce, architects have no choice but to think in section, not just in plan, to invent new forms of domestic movement." Recalling the work of artist MC Escher, the floor plates sit at differing heights and depths, hovering and interlocking throughout, acting as dividers, storage and space. Floor-to-ceiling windows let light flow in, while subtle screening affords privacy to the bathroom and bedroom.

Katsumasa Tanaka/A House in Japan, gestalten 2026. Image: Katsumasa Tanaka/ A House in Japan, gestalten 2026.

3/ Tiny Home is Tall, Tokyo

"Sufficiency can be designed with dignity" says Giraldeau. "It essentially asks: how much space do we need to live well?" In the west, bigger is often considered better, but in Japan, design seeks out ways of living well with less – and on this corner plot of just 30 sq m (323 sq ft), architects Kominoru Design have developed a three-storey home. The upper floor holds a rooftop terrace; inside, a bathtub is tucked into an angled wall, while tall windows in the roof circulate air. Trees planted above the eaves on a raised second-floor garden skilfully weave a tiny plot into a beautiful home.

Lamberto Rubino/A House in Japan, gestalten. Image: Lamberto Rubino/ A House in Japan, gestalten.

4/ Cat House, Kamakura

In an ageing country where pets now outnumber children and often stand in for extended family, architect Tan Yamanouchi designed a home from the perspective of his two cats, alongside his wife and himself – a decision that produced a radical, egalitarian house. At its centre is a spiral staircase with 23 levels calibrated to a cat's stride. Like branches from a tree, the bedroom, studio, kitchen, dining room and bathroom all peel off from the stairs, providing a playful, equitable home for cats and humans alike.

Akira Nakamura/A House in Japan, gestalten 2026. Image: Akira Nakamura/ A House in Japan, gestalten 2026.

5/ Pale Veil, Tokyo

Wedged into the intersection of a major road and a railway line, this apartment draws on creative imagination – fundamental to Japanese design – to shape a calming, expansive home built around the concept of engawa, the transitional space between exterior and interior. A 40-sq-m (431-sq-ft) balcony serves as the engawa, while a butterfly shoji (traditional room divider) tarp, made from dual layers of translucent fabric threaded with steel pipes, adjusts to the light, extending out to filter the intense summer glare.

Shinkenchiku-cha/A House in Japan, gestalten. Image: Shinkenchiku-cha/ A House in Japan, gestalten.

6/ Hut and Tower House, Tokyo

Resembling a stack of smart Lego bricks, this playful family home is tucked into the backstreets of Tokyo's Meguro district, on a busy shopping street. Designed by architects Onishimaki + Hyakudauki, it is built from a series of stacked cubes. An annex – the 'hut' – juts off the main tower and, thanks to its proximity to the street, doubles as a spare room or studio. Behind it, a tower of cubes rises into a five-storey home. A spiral staircase winds up from the ground floor, through bedrooms, a living spaze and a playroom at the top. An exterior staircase links out to a second-floor shower.

Akira Nakamura/A House in Japan, gestalten 2026. Image: Akira Nakamura/A House in Japan, gestalten 2026.

7/ Tokyo Blue Apartment, Tokyo

"This apartment isn't a bespoke standalone house, but a standard 1970s 3LDK apartment made radical," Giraldeau tells the BBC. The acronym LDK – living, dining, kitchen – describes the open-plan format that became standard during Japan's postwar urbanisation, with the number denoting bedrooms. Mass-produced for a booming urban workforce, these units are ubiquitous and often generic. Design firm Roovice creates individuality and zoning by using colour, exposed concrete, flexible lighting, custom storage and a cobalt-blue floor strip. "The canon of Japanese interiors is material-led, not colour-led," says Giraldeau. "Here, colour is structural rather than decorative – it organises movement, connects rooms, and turns a standard unit into something personal."

Satoshi Takae/A House in Japan, gestalten. Image: Satoshi Takae/ A House in Japan, gestalten.

8/ House with Membrane Roof, Tokyo

Inventive thinking is behind this home that was hemmed in on three sides in a tightly packed Tokyo neighbourhood. Keen to increase the light, Yuko Nagayama & Associates with Shohei Yoshida + Associates looked upwards for solutions. They suspended a double fabric roof in a catenary curve, in effect a shoji screen, "Traditional Japanese architecture relied on diffused light," says Giraldeau. They scaled this up to a roof, which lights, ventilates and insulates, while trees grow through the atrium beneath. 

Symbiotic House/Masaya Yoshimura /A House in Japan, gestalten 2026. Image: A House in Japan, gestalten.

9/ Symbiotic House, Karuizawa

Built on kyōsei, the Japanese concept of symbiosis or synergy, this house, designed by READ & Architects, connects two buildings via a glass corridor. Designed for a newly retired couple, one side holds the main living space and master bedroom, while the other offers guest accommodation – with the option of housing a live-in caregiver in future. "In Japan, one of the world's oldest societies, architecture has learned to anticipate care rather than react to it," Giraldeau tells the BBC. Nestled in the foothills of Mount Asama, volcanic stone gardens and firs encircle the home, mirroring the forests of Karuizawa beyond the windows.

Daici Ano/ A House in Japan, gestalten. Image: Daici Ano/ A House in Japan, gestalten.

10/ Blurring Boundaries, Kawasaki 

This family home was reimagined by Taichi Mitsuya & Associates as an extension of the city. Carefully woven into the Kawasaki neighbourhood of narrow streets and waterways, the house is open to light, air and the adjacent urban rhythms, while maintaining a sense of privacy. A 30ft skylit void, floored in steel grating, floods the interior with a greenhouse-like glow. For the family of four who live here, sliding partitions cleverly blur indoor and outdoor life – below is an airy veranda, and above is a garden terrace. 

Author: Hannah Newton. This article first appeared on BBC.com

There is half a tonne of ice melting outside the Eavan Boland Library in Trinity College Dublin at the moment, and a second half tonne sitting beside it that is barely melting at all.

That is the Ice Box Challenge. Two boxes, identical in size, orientation and exposure, each loaded with the same quantity of ice on the same day. One is built the ordinary way, to current Irish building regulations. The other is built to the Passivhaus standard. Neither box has heating or cooling in it, no power of any kind, so the only thing separating them is the fabric itself. Whatever ice is left at the end comes down to the walls, the glazing and the airtightness, and nothing else. 

The ice boxes.

They went in on August 5 and the difference is already visible through the viewing windows. Sensors inside both boxes are streaming temperature and humidity live at zebsummit.com. The boxes stay until the end of the month and the final ice is weighed and revealed at the ZEB Summit on September 23. 

The public can see its progress in real time until August 31. Two building structures, each containing a block of ice weighing over half a tonne, will be exposed to identical Irish weather conditions. 

One is built to current Irish building regulations, while the other is constructed to the Passivhaus standard – a leading high-performance building standard. Visitors to the Trinity College experiment will be able to track the difference in energy efficiency and heat loss of each structure as the ice melts at different rates when exposed to the elements.

It's all part of ZEB Summit 2026, which will return to the RDS, Dublin on September 23, 2026. 

'The argument about building standards has gone abstract'

"The reason we built it is that the argument about building standards has gone abstract and people have stopped hearing it," said Denis Manzke, associate director, Mosart Group. "Two things get lost. The first is that the gap between a building that merely complies and one that is genuinely excellent costs far less than almost anyone assumes, and the boxes make that impossible to argue with because you can simply look at them.

"The second is that we have spent a decade building for energy ratings and forgetting about comfort. A rating is a number on a page at the point of sale. Comfort is whether your bedroom is bearable tonight and whether you can afford to heat it in January. The ice is measuring the second thing.

"This is the first time the challenge has come to Ireland. It began in Brussels in 2007 and has run in more than 17 cities since. It lands here now because there are more than 4,000 Passivhaus homes under way in Dublin, the majority of them social and affordable, and new zero emission building regulations are coming.

Continuous temperature and humidity logging published live

"The engineering interest is in the method. Two boxes matched for size, orientation and exposure, identical ice loads placed on the same day, no active systems in either, and continuous temperature and humidity logging published live. It isolates fabric performance about as cleanly as you can outside a lab." 

Tomás O’Leary, co-founder and managing director of Mosart, said: "Having seen the impact of the Ice Box Challenge across Europe, the US and Canada, we're delighted to bring this SciArt installation to Dublin for the first time. It's a powerful way to show how building performance affects energy use, helping people understand, through a simple visual experiment, how better buildings can reduce energy demand, improve comfort, and play a vital role in tackling climate change. We hope it sparks conversations not only within the construction industry, but among the wider public about the buildings we all live and work in every day."

Dr. Aimee Byrne, E3 assistant professor in climate adaptation engineering at Trinity College Dublin, said: “Trinity College Dublin is delighted to partner with Mosart Group and the ZEB Summit to bring the Ice Box Challenge to our campus. We are excited to engage the public in the science of energy-efficient design and spark conversation about how high-performance buildings can shape a sustainable and resilient future. The installation aligns with Trinity's mission to tackle climate and biodiversity challenges for a healthy planet and healthy people through our educational programmes, research and innovation, and day-to-day operations, in partnership with external collaborators and communities.”

Since May 24, Ireland's building energy rating (BER) scale has had a new summit.

The A0 category, reserved for zero-emission buildings, now crowns the simplified eight-point scale, and by 2030 every new home in the state must reach it.

It is tempting to read A0 as simply 'a bit better than A1 used to be', one more rung on a familiar ladder. That reading is wrong, and the sooner the design professions internalise why, the fewer expensive disappointments there will be. An A0 is not a grade a building drifts into by being generally excellent.

It is a conjunctive test: six separate conditions, assessed within DEAP, every one of which must be satisfied simultaneously. Fail any single one, by a single kilowatt-hour, a single kilogram of carbon, or a single gas hob – and the building is excluded from the top of the scale, however magnificent it is in every other respect.

The six conditions

Under the zero emission building (ZEB) definition implemented in DEAP, a dwelling attains A0 only if it meets all of the following: 

• First, a primary energy value of no more than 42 kWh/m² per year;
• Second, a carbon emissions value of no more than 5 kg CO²eq/m² per year;
• Third, no on-site use of fossil fuels of any kind;
• Fourth, the capability to respond to external signals: the building must be able to adjust its energy use in reaction to the grid;
• Fifth, its energy demand must be met by carbon-free sources or otherwise comply with national requirements;
• Sixth, full compliance with nearly zero energy building (nZEB) standards, which is itself not one check but three, since DEAP demonstrates nZEB compliance through the Energy Performance Coefficient, the Carbon Performance Coefficient and the Renewable Energy Ratio together.

Six conditions on paper; eight distinct pass-or-fail gates in practice. Each deserves a moment's attention, because each fails buildings differently.

1) The energy ceiling: 42 is lower than it looks

The primary energy threshold of 42 kWh/m²/year sits in deceptive territory. Under the old scale, an A1 required 25 kWh/m²/year or better, while an A2 stretched to 50. The A0 ceiling therefore falls between the two, which means a large share of the homes Ireland has spent the last decade celebrating as A-rated will not clear it.

A compliant, heat-pumped, well-insulated new apartment certified A2 at 45 kWh/m²/year is, by the arithmetic of the new scale, three kilowatt-hours from the summit and might as well be 30.

Primary energy, remember, is not the energy a household uses but delivered energy multiplied by fuel-specific conversion factors, so the figure is sensitive to heating system efficiency, hot water strategy, ventilation choices and the DEAP treatment of on-site generation. Getting under 42 without photovoltaics is possible for compact, well-oriented forms; for most dwelling types, the solar array is doing real work in the calculation.

2) The carbon ceiling: Five kilograms and falling grid intensity

The second condition, 5 kg CO₂eq/m²/year, runs in parallel and is not automatically satisfied by passing the first. Carbon and energy are correlated but not identical: the carbon figure depends on which fuels serve which loads and on the emission factors DEAP assigns to them.

For an all-electric home, the two conditions tend to rise and fall together as the electricity grid decarbonises, but any residual combustion – a solid fuel stove retained for character, a gas connection kept 'just in case' – drags the carbon number disproportionately. In practice this condition polices the same territory as the third, but with a numerical tripwire rather than a categorical one.

3) The absolute bar: No fossil fuels, no exceptions

Condition three is the simplest to state and the most unforgiving in practice: no on-site use of fossil fuels. Not efficient use, not occasional use, not backup use – none. A single gas hob in an otherwise exemplary passive-standard house is disqualifying.

So is an oil-fired backup boiler that never runs, and so, for retrofit projects, is the gas boiler the client wanted to keep 'until the heat pump proves itself'. This is a binary condition, and binary conditions are where good buildings with one sentimental compromise go to lose their rating. For architects, the implication lands early in the design process: the fuel decision is now a rating decision, made at RIBA Stage 2, not a services detail resolved at Stage 4.

4) The novel condition: A building that listens

Condition four is the quiet revolution in the list. The requirement that a dwelling be capable of responding to external signals imports the logic of the smart grid into the building certificate: an A0 home must be able to modulate its demand – shifting heat pump operation, water heating or vehicle charging in response to signals from outside. This reflects the recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive's vision of buildings as active grid participants rather than passive consumers, and it is the condition least familiar to Irish design teams.

It cannot be retrofitted with a certificate in hand; it requires controls, metering and communication capability specified from the outset. The profession has spent 20 years learning to design for low demand. Condition four asks it to design for flexible demand, which is a different discipline.

5) The moving target: Carbon-free supply

Condition five, that carbon-free sources meet energy demand or comply with national requirements, is, at present, the easiest gate to pass and the least understood. Because DEAP evaluates supply at the level of the national grid, an all-electric dwelling currently satisfies this condition by default: the carbon-free share of Irish grid electricity assumed under 2026 conditions comfortably exceeds the compliance threshold. But 'currently' is the operative word.

The condition is defined against a moving national energy system, and its generosity today is a function of the grid's progress, not the building's virtue. Designers should treat it as passed but not banked.

6) The compound condition: nZEB, three tests deep

Then comes condition six, and this is where the conjunctive character of A0 becomes fully visible. Compliance with nZEB standards is demonstrated in DEAP through three simultaneous checks: the Energy Performance Coefficient and Carbon Performance Coefficient, which compare the design against a notional reference dwelling, and the Renewable Energy Ratio, which requires a minimum share of the building's energy use to come from renewable sources.

A dwelling can hold its primary energy under 42 and its carbon under 5 and still stumble here most plausibly on the renewables ratio, where an efficient but renewables-light design falls short, or on the coefficient checks in an unusual built form that diverges awkwardly from its notional reference. Condition six means A0 is not merely a performance destination; it is a performance destination reached by a prescribed route.

One slip from zero

Add it up, and the character of the new summit becomes clear. A0 is not a spectrum position; it is a logical AND across eight gates, and DEAP does not average. There is no partial credit, no compensating excellence, no 'A0 minus'.

The house at 43 kWh/m²/year and the house at 143 receive the same answer to the A0 question. This severity is deliberate: the category exists to give unambiguous meaning to 'zero-emission' ahead of the 2030 mandate, and an unambiguous category cannot be a fuzzy one. But it changes the nature of design risk. Under the old scale, a late-stage compromise cost a sub-grade, a B1 slipping to B2.

Under the new one, a single substitution during construction, an undocumented insulation product that forces a DEAP default value, or a value-engineered PV array can drop a project from the best rating in Ireland to the second best, with everything that implies for marketing, green mortgage eligibility and, from 2030, regulatory compliance for new-builds.

The professional response is not despair but discipline. A0 must be designed for explicitly, verified continuously and protected contractually: every one of the eight gates identified at concept stage, tracked through procurement, and evidenced with certified documentation the assessor can accept because in DEAP, what cannot be proven does not exist, and default values are where marginal A0 go to die.

The rating rewards exactly the habits the profession claims as its own: whole-building thinking, early systems integration and rigour sustained to handover. Ireland has set its new gold standard behind six locks. The architects who learn the shape of every key will be the ones handing clients the door.

References

1. SEAI. (2023). Domestic BER Assessors - Dwellings Technical Bulletin #5. https://www.seai.ie/publications/Technical-Bulletin-05-Issue-1-February-2023.pdf
2. Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. (2022). Building Regulations Part L Amendment - Buildings other than Dwellings. https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/d82ea-building-regulations-part-l-amendment-buildings-other-than-dwellings/
3. Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. (2021). Climate Action Plan 2021. https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/6223e-climate-action-plan-2021/
4. SEAI. (2022). DEAP 4.3 Software Updates. https://www.seai.ie/blog/deap-4-3-software-update/
5. SEAI. (2021). NEAP Technical Bulletin #1: nZEB Compliance. https://www.seai.ie/publications/NEAP-Technical-Bulletin-01.pdf
6. Eirgrid. (2022). Annual Renewable Energy Constraint and Curtailment Report 2022. https://www.eirgridgroup.com/site-files/library/EirGrid/Annual-Renewable-Constraint-and-Curtailment-Report-2022.pdf

Author: Lala Rukh (LinkedIn) is a doctoral researcher at the University of Galway. She is an electrical engineer and has master's degrees in energy systems and marine plastics abatement.

A national housing conference report highlights the role of Age Friendly, universal design in responding to Ireland’s changing housing needs, particularly for older and disabled people.

The report, co-authored by Age Friendly Ireland, the National Disability Authority (NDA), the Irish Council for Social Housing (ICSH), and Irish Wheelchair Association (IWA), highlights a gap between current housing design and evolving demographic needs. It outlines how universal design can support more inclusive, adaptable and long-term sustainable housing that is accessible and usable for people of all ages and abilities, including older and disabled people.

Catherine McGuigan, chief officer of Age Friendly Ireland Shared Service, said: “Ireland has a rapidly ageing population with the percentage of older people over the age of 65 increasing to approximately 30% of the population by 2057.

"Age Friendly Homes designed to universal principles supports people to age in place and is fundamental to Ireland’s commitment under the Dublin Declaration of creating Age Friendly Cities and Communities developed by the World Health Organisation.”

Report’s key findings

The report’s key findings are:

• Current building regulations may not fully reflect demographic change or the principles of Universal Design;
• There is a perception that incorporating Universal Design is prohibitively expensive, when in fact research shows that planning this approach from the outset can do much to mitigate additional costs;
• There are opportunities to further incorporate lived experience in the application of Universal Design in housing.

The report outlines several considerations to support progress, including reviewing regulations, exploring a more consistent national approach to Universal Design in housing, and strengthening collaboration across policy, design, and construction sectors.

Director of the National Disability Authority, Dr Aideen Hartney, said: “A Universal Design approach is a key driver for advancing inclusive housing for all and in particular for disabled and older people.”

Irish Wheelchair Association advocates with and on behalf of people with disabilities around their housing needs. Recently they supported a mother of a wheelchair user who shared: “I have to lift my 18-year-old daughter upstairs because we have no downstairs bedrooms. I am on the transfer list, but the council say they have no accessible houses.”

A considered approach to Universal Design and Age Friendly principles can support the development of homes that are more flexible, inclusive, and responsive to people’s needs over time. This is particularly relevant for older people and people with disabilities, while also benefiting the wider population.

Donal McManus, CEO, ICSH: “As housing delivery across all tenures increases, it is imperative that more is done across the entire housing sector to embed Universal Design principles and to ensure we are meeting the housing needs of our entire population.”

You can read the full report here.

A national housing shortage is straining finances and communities across the United States.

In Massachusetts, at least 222,000 homes will have to be built in the next 10 years to meet the population's needs. At the same time, there are numerous challenges in traditional construction. There is a shortage of skilled construction workers.

Most projects involve multiple contractors and subcontractors, adding complexity and lag time. And the construction process, as well as the buildings themselves, can be a significant source of emissions that contribute to climate change.

Reframe Systems, co-founded by Vikas Enti SM '20, uses robotics, software, and high-performance materials to address these problems. Founded in 2022, the company deploys microfactories that bring housing fabrication and production closer to the regions where the homes are needed. The first homes designed and manufactured in Reframe's first microfactory have been fully built in Arlington and Somerville, Massachusetts. 

Enti's experiences in MIT System Design and Management (SDM) shaped the company from its start. "Learning how to navigate the system and finding the optimal value for each stakeholder has been a key part of the business strategy," he says, "and that's rooted in what I learnt at SDM."

Better tools for system-level problems

Enti applied to SDM's master of science in engineering and management while he was working at Kiva Systems, overseeing its acquisition by Amazon and transformation into Amazon Robotics. He found that the SDM programme's fundamentals of systems engineering, system architecture, and project management provided him with the tools he needed to address system-level problems in his work.

While he was at MIT, Enti also served as an associate director for the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, which offers students and researchers mentorship, feedback, and potential funding for their startup ideas. He realised that "there isn't a single formula for how businesses start, or how long it takes to get them started", he says, which helped shape his plans to start his own business.

Enti took a leave of absence from MIT to oversee the expansion of Amazon Robotics in Europe. He returned and completed his degree in 2020, writing his thesis on developing technology that could mitigate falls for elderly people. This instinct to use his education for a good cause resurfaced when his daughters were born. He wanted his future business to address a real-world problem and have a social impact, while also reducing carbon emissions.

Growing housing, shrinking emissions

Enti concluded that housing, with immediate real-world impact and a significant share of global carbon emissions, was the right problem to work on. He reached out to his colleagues Aaron Small and Felipe Polido from Amazon Robotics to share his idea for advanced, low-cost factories that could be deployed quickly and close to where they were needed. The two joined him as co-founders.

Currently, the microfactory in Andover, Massachusetts, produces structural panels, with robotics completing wall and ceiling framing and people completing the rest of the work, including wiring and plumbing. Eventually, Reframe hopes to automate more of the building process through further use of robotics.

The modular construction process allows for reduced waste and disruption on the eventual home site. And the finished homes are designed to be energy-efficient and ready for solar panel installation. The company is set to start work soon on a group of homes in Devens, Massachusetts.

In addition to the Andover location, Reframe is setting up in southern California to help rebuild homes that were destroyed in the area's January 2025 wildfires. The company's software-assisted design process and the adjustability of the microfactories allows them to meet local zoning and building codes and align with the local architectural aesthetic. This means that in Somerville, Reframe's completed buildings look like modernised versions of the neighbouring three-storey buildings, known locally as 'triple-deckers'. On the other side of the country, Reframe's design offerings include Spanish-style and craftsman homes.

"Housing is a complex systems problem," says Enti, explaining the impact SDM has had on his work at Reframe. The methods and tools taught in the integrated core class EM.412 (Foundations of System Design and Management) help him tackle systems-level problems and take the needs of multiple stakeholders into account.

The Reframe team used technology roadmapping as they devised their overall business plan, inspired by the work of Olivier de Weck, associate head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. And lectures on project management from Bryan Moser, SDM's academic director, remain relevant. 

"Embracing the fact that this is a systems problem, and learning how to navigate the system and the stakeholders to make sure we're finding the optimal value, has been a key part of the business strategy," says Enti.

Reframe Systems is set to continue learning through iteration as it plans to expand its network of microfactories. The company remains committed to the core vision of sustainably meeting the country's need for more housing.

"I'm grateful we get to do this," says Enti. "Once you strip away all the robotics, the advanced algorithms, and the factories, these are high-quality, healthy homes that families get to live in and grow."