MANCHESTER United defender Gary Neville is building an earth sheltered eco home that promises to become one of Britain’s leading environmental showcases.
Neville,34, has been nicknamed “Swampy” by teammates at MUFC, who call him an “eco warrior” because he drives a Prius. England’s most-capped footballer is also a thinker, and accepted an honorary doctorate from Bolton Uni last year. Now the Manchester United defender is walking the eco-talk with a new $5m home set into the hillside of his estate near Bolton, Lancashire.
Almost all the home will be built into the hillside, which, according to design firm Make Architects, ‘enables the surrounding moorland to seamlessly flow across the roof’.
The innovative design has been likened to a Neolithic settlement. But the technology will be space age. The Manchester United player will generate power from windmills, solar panels and a ground source heat pump. Any surplus will flow into his neighbouring mansion, and can also be sold to the grid.
The artist’s impression suggests soft lighting in the ‘six petals’ of the house will prevent the home from being a blot on the landscape at night-time
Its flower-like blueprint has petals radiating from a central kitchen, each designated as respective areas to ‘eat, relax, entertain, work and play’.
The architects have compared it to Skara Brae neolithic settlement in Orkney, because of the way it is built into the ground.
But locals prefer to compare it to the Teletubbies.
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4 Responses
An honorary doctorate from Bolton University? – isn’t that an oxymoron? (Apologies to all those hardworking students and alumni of Bolton, but I just couldn’t help myself. I didn’t even know that Bolton had a university. Recent political upheavals have decreed that once-lowly Polytechnics and colleges can now call themselves “Universities”). Doesn’t it devalue the Doctorate when an ordinary person off the street, whose only claim to fame is to kick a ball between two posts, walks off with a doctorate? I have a doctorate, not from Bolton, and I’d hate to think that I had anything in common with this footballer. I feel immense sympathy for past alumni.
Well I admire him for doing some positive – there are so many examples of his fellow leather footers doing stupid things that it is nice to see one who is starting to take an interest in the world.
Why do so many comments on here seem to come from the liberal equivalent of a Daily Mail reader? If you can’t say anything positive then don’t say anything at all.
A thinker would be thinking some of that 5 million pounds could be better spent on making this world a better place.
“England’s most-capped footballer is also a thinker, and accepted an honorary doctorate”
He’s not England’s most capped footballer by some distance, and a thinker? He’s such an intellectual that he thinks there’s anything enviromnentally friendly about owning a Prius. You do realise that an honourary doctorate is one you get given for being a celebrity, don’t you?
Great article :/