Cloughjordan Eco VillageThe Cloughjordan Eco village is a registered educational charity . It is an internationally recognised location for learning about sustainable living. It consits of over 100 residents living in a mix of high-performance green homes, with over 20,000 newly planted trees and Ireland’s largest renewable energy district heating system. The construction is still ongoing to complete the planned total of 130 homes.

The Village company provides its members with fully serviced sites which have either outline planning permission, or full planning permission for certain buildings. All buildings are built by the members in line with the overall Master Plan scheme.

The members, staff and directors of the Village use the process of consensus decision making to arrive at decisions. Consensus decision-making works creatively to include all persons making the decision. Instead of simply voting for an item, and having the majority of the group getting their way, the group is committed to finding solutions that everyone can live with.

Much of the early years was spent developing the structure and ethos of the company and raising finance to buy land for the ecovillage. Capital was raised through the members putting in their own money and through a loan from an ethical bank.

What is an Ecovillages?Cloughjordan ecovillage is a member of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) which defines an ecovillage as ‘an intentional or traditional community using local participatory processes to holistically integrate ecological, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of sustainability in order to regenerate social and natural environments’. It sees them as one solution to the great problems of our times, the limits to growth and the unsustainability of our societies. It states: ‘Ecovillages, by endeavoring for lifestyles which are “successfully continuable into the indefinite future”, are living models of sustainability, and examples of how action can be taken immediately. They represent an effective, accessible way to combat the degradation of our social, ecological and spiritual environments. They show us how we can move toward sustainability in the 21st century (Agenda 21)’. In 1998, ecovillages were first officially named among the United Nations’ top 100 listing of Best Practices, as excellent models of sustainable living (GEN website).

Key milestones in the Ecovillage’s history• 1999 Formation of Sustainable Projects Ireland.• 2002 Identification of Cloughjordan as the possible location• 2005 Grant of Outline Planning Permission• 2006 Securing of loan finance for infrastructure works• 2008 Completion of infrastructure works• Christmas 2009 First residents move in• 2010 Fiber optic cabling installed• Early 2011 Planting of 17,000 trees in the community woodland• June 2011 Construction begins on Eco-Enterprise Centre

Ecovillages are urban or rural communities of people who strive to integrate a supportive social environment with a low impact way of life. To achieve this, they integrate various aspects of ecological design, permaculture, ecological building, green production, alternative energy, community building practices, and much more. The means by which an ecovillage grows and evolves are as follows:

Community aspects• Recognising and relating to the needs of the local community.• Sharing common resources and providing mutual aid.• Emphasising holistic and preventative health practices.• Providing work by fostering ecological business ideas.• Promoting unending education.• Fostering cultural expression.

Ecological aspects• Growing food as much as possible within the community bio-region.• Supporting organic food production.• Creating homes out of local materials where possible.• Using village based renewable energy systems.• Protecting biodiversity.• Fostering ecological business principles.• Assessing the life cycle of all products used from an ecological point.• Preserving clean soil, water and air through proper waste management.• Protecting nature and safeguarding wilderness areas.

Cultural aspects• Shared creativity, artistic expression, cultural activities and celebrations.• Sense of community unity and mutual support.• Shared vision and agreements that emphasise the cultural of community.

Cloughjordan – Critical analysisOverall, I find the cloughjordan eco village to be hugely successful and innovative as a green alternative to modern day living. However, from visiting the site four time over the past five years I’ve found there to be a huge lack of architectural coherence among the newly constructed homes and buildings. Each house is somewhat unique in its own way, but in turn creates a mish-mash of materials and building types. The earlier homes are all built to a certain quality, but as the recession hit, the newly constructed homes seem to be built with less thought about materials. There is an newly constructed enterprise center which provides a great service to the eco-village and cloughjornad as a new community enterprise, but it is constructed to the back of the development and is very out of scale, constructed from industrial materials.

In the early years of the scheme, residents had to pay high amounts to access the group water heating systems as there weren’t enough residents to spread the cost. It has since leveled out as the development is about 70% complete.

Andrew Mc Allister - Dublin School of Architecture, DIT, Dublin, Ireland.COOPERATIVE HOUSING SYSTEMS ELECTIVE / CIVIC HOUSING WORKSPACE