As many of you may know, I’ve tweeted for a few years now and love reading what people think, so it was great to spot this tweet from Guardian Sustainable Business:

@urban_splash Congratulations on making the #GSBA shortlist! Here’s your page on our new best practice exchange ow.ly/bfdWd

— Sustainable Business (@GuardianSustBiz) May 30, 2012

It’s fantastic that our work on transforming the former Imperial Tobacco HQ, Bristol, into contemporary eco-homes has been recognised as an example of best practice in sustainable business.

Here’s what Jackie Wills had to say about Lakeshore on the Guardian website:

Bristol’s iconic Wills Imperial Tobacco Factory has been transformed into 286 eco homes set in 10 acres of parkland with a lake.

Two decades after it was abandoned, the grade II listed 1970s building has been re-made and re-modelled by Urban Splash into Lakeshore, one of Bristol’s most sustainable properties.

The redevelopers maintained the original building’s Cor-ten steel frame to keep its history alive, while architects, Ferguson Mann, incorporated contemporary designs.

The homes have been created with green technology including geothermal boreholes, an ETFE roof and recycling systems in each apartment.

Every apartment has under-floor heating and hot water provided by a ground source heat pump and biomass boiler. The ground source heat pump system runs fluid through 100-metre deep boreholes.

The natural geothermal heat in the subsoil is constant at 10-12C all year round. The fluid absorbs this heat, which is increased to 45-50C to heat the apartments and boosted further for hot water by a biomass boiler fuelled bywaste wood. The supply of heating and hot water is virtually 100% renewable.

Every apartment has a bike rack and the homeowner’s manual encourages sustainable living. There are on-site allotments, a barbecue area, gym, fishing clubs and a boules court.

Being environmentally responsible is one of the most important aspects of the Urban Splash philosophy. It means wherever possible reusing and restoring. Keeping what’s good and improving what’s not. Lakeshore is the latest in a series of Urban Splash schemes where we have restored fantastic disused buildings to life, such a Fort Dunlop in Birmingham, Lister Mills in Bradford, Royal William Yard in Plymouth and, of course, Park Hill in Sheffield.

We’re not perfect, and we do make mistakes, but what matters is that we do our best to make a positive impact on the environment wherever we work.