The London-based practice, which has offices in Cardiff, was commissioned by a collaboration of 23 Welsh social landlords, Tai ar y Cyd (Shared Housing) to design the pattern book last January. The group includes all Welsh local authorities, as well as roughly half of the countrys registered social landlords.The book proposes 15 types of home and 18 variants, ranging from one-bedroom flats and four-bedroom houses to fully wheelchair-accessible bungalows and flats, which, Stride Treglown says, can be deployed anywhere in the country.The Welsh government, which has supported and part-funded the initiative, said it will make building homes in Wales faster, cheaper, and less carbon and energy-intensive.AdvertisementDesigned to meet Welsh Development Quality and Housing Quality standards, the Modern Methods of Construction Category 2 homes will feature pre-manufactured timber panels within timber frames, with a choice of bio-based insulation including wood fibre, cellulose fibre and sheeps wool, and finishes including timber and brick. Source:Stride TreglownStride Treglown's Housing Pattern Book for Wales: Enhanced wall typeWherever possible, the homes will use timber sourced from Welsh forests and manufactured in Welsh factories in order to support local jobs and businesses.The Welsh government said the book would encourage higher-quality homes, economic regeneration, faster construction, use of low-carbon materials, cost certainty, reduced waste and less disruption to communities.A design guide launched alongside the pattern book offers guidance on how to use it, including placemaking advice to help users identify which house type to choose and technical information about its performance expectations in different orientations.Stride Treglowns designs feature a choice of two performance levels, baseline and enhanced, which it says will allow for construction skills to vary from site to site in the short term, with the ambition that eventually all homes would be of a Passivhaus-equivalent standard.Advertisement Source:Stride TreglownStride Treglowns Housing Pattern Book for Wales: VisualisationStride Treglown was commissioned to design the Pattern Book early last year, after Tai ar y Cyd formed specifically to spearhead the project.Rob Wheaton, associate director at Stride Treglown, told the AJ that the practices work on a previous low-carbon housing project near Swansea had helped win it the pattern book commission.The project, Gwynfaen Farm, involved the delivery of 144 homes built with Welsh timber, during which time Stride Treglown developed strong relationships with Welsh timber providers and a knowledge of the supply chain, according to Wheaton.The architect said that, in the short term, the pattern book would ease the compliancy process that social housing providers in Wales must go through to secure grant funding, as well as making regional placemaking smoother.He added that the long-term ambition was to engage with planners and local authorities on how this can be more widely adopted, including over the border.Unlike the Housing Pattern Book which will be launched in New South Wales, Australia, later this year, the designs in the Welsh Pattern Book will not be pre-approved for planning permission, and planners will need to consider the specifications of any site and development, the Welsh government confirmed.The Tai ar y Cyd Pattern Book was officially unveiled on 15 January at the University of Wales Trinity Saint Davids Swansea Campus.Jayne Bryant, the Welsh cabinet secretary for Housing and Local Government, described the project as a significant step forward in [the governments] commitment to building sustainable and affordable homes here in Wales.She added: This innovative pattern book give developers the tools they need to build homes more quickly and deliver against our target of building 20,000 affordable low-carbon homes by the end of this Senedd term.