Bright Green Futures is the South West’s premier multi-award winning sustainable community property developer. We give people the opportunity to design and build homes as part of a sustainable housing community where they can truly thrive and live in harmony with the planet.
Bright Green Futures was founded by Steffie Broer, who was inspired by her grandfather and father, whose business pioneered technical solutions to address climate change. Steffie, rather than step into the family business, forged her own path to creating her own vision for a sustainable future.
She lived in communities and led several eco-construction projects around the world, worked as a sustainable energy advisor for several years, and completed a Doctorate in Engineering for UCL’s Centre for Urban Sustainability. Steffie then launched Bright Green Futures off the back of her award-winning publication on how to achieve low carbon livelihoods in self-build housing communities and her experience of building and living in one at The Yard, Bristol.
Bright Green Futures has since grown into a team of six dedicated individuals who share the same vision and values. We are proud to have developed The Courtyard – Bristol’s first purpose-built co-housing project, and our new net-zero carbon community scheme, Water Lilies which is the first of its kind. Our work has earned us the following awards: Green Initiative Award, Best Eco-Aware Housing Services UK, Best Sustainable Housing Development Company and Energy Efficient Champion.
We build communities that provide a springboard for residents to live meaningful and happy lives, allowing them to flourish and contribute to society. Along the way we also hope our developments inspire a new generation of architects, building contractors, community builders and developers. To achieve these goals, we innovate with housing on the following fronts:
Bespoke Homes
Most new build homes in the UK are one-size-fits-all and aren’t up to speed with the changing needs of people’s lives. We want to create beautifully designed homes that suit the needs of people now and in the future, recognising that lifestyles and family groups change over time. We provide this opportunity by offering self-finish and custom build homes. Each route enables people to design bespoke homes, with more flexibility through self finish. For those self-finishing, we build their fully serviced, super energy efficient shell, and they manage the fit-out with our support. Whereas, for custom builders, we build their home to their specifications. There are always challenges on building sites and so much detail to understand. We work on the big things, but more importantly, we focus on the detail. And we do that hand in hand with our customers, helping them through the process so they can navigate any challenges confidently.
Building Resilient Communities
Our schemes are designed with cohousing principles: homes are often arranged around a shared garden and community hub, which can be used for co-working, classes, film nights, and events for the wider community, and car parking is kept to the periphery or underground, making the living environment safe and healthy for all. We listen to our communities, understand their needs, and work with a co-production ethos to create community developments that work for residents long term. We bring future residents to the core of decision making by facilitating a series of workshops during the course of the build and by establishing an estate management company for residents to manage their community after completion. The workshops support them in areas such as managing their projects, choosing sustainable materials, and making decisions about the design and functionality of their community hub and shared garden.
Quality and a Positive Environmental Impact
We design with Passivhaus Principles and the energy hierarchy in mind. We build our homes to last for 200 years, and we work very closely with the contractors on site to achieve this. We are continuing to innovate and break ground too as shown in us developing the UK’s first net-zero carbon residential microgrid at our latest development, Water Lilies. The beauty of this localised grid is it enables residents to store excess electricity generated by rooftop solar panels or the National Grid in a Tesla battery, to be shared across the site when needed. And we don’t just focus on the tech. We also on new projects. We are excited to find more partnerships that allow us to engage with local communities and co-housing groups so we can create
places that benefit new and existing residents.
We are also looking forward to transforming many more lives of individual people, families, friends and neighbours. Anyone who is interested in living at one of our developments today or in future, or any groups which value community, sustainability and an element of bespoke housing, working and living, however you may wish to be involved, please do contact us.
