“生态屋”与其环境和居住者的福祉和谐相处。它可以收获包括水和能源在内的可再生资源。它提供了好房子的所有基本功能，即为其中的人们提供安全舒适的环境。好的房屋必须提供健康，安静，和平，热舒适和安全的环境，并且价格合理。赫瑞瓦特（Heriot-Watt）的Ecohouse团队正在开发房屋设计方法，以创建具有以下品质的房屋：低能耗的房屋，运行良好，产生最小的生命周期和碳排放，并且拥有令人愉悦的居住空间。Ecohouse方法的发展需要广泛的研究专业知识，技能和资源。Ecohouse团队使用英国一些最好的研究实验室，
An 'Ecohouse' is harmoniously connected to its environment and to the well-being of its occupants. It can harvest renewable resources including water and energy. It provides all the fundamental functions of a good house, namely, to offer a safe environment with multiple comforts for those within it. A good house must provide a healthy, quiet, peaceful, thermally comfortable and safe environment, and it must be affordable.<br><br>Heriot-Watt's Ecohouse team are developing approaches to house design that will create homes with these qualities: homes that run well with low energy bills, produce minimal life cycle and carbon emissions and are pleasing places to inhabit.<br><br>The development of the Ecohouse approach calls upon a wide range of research expertise, skills and resources. The Ecohouse team uses some of the best research laboratories in the UK, namely Heriot-Watt's leading acoustic, water and materials labs, wind tunnels, and its artificial sky, heliodon and climate chambers. Our specialists work in interdisciplinary groups that build on their links with government and industry to produce innovative solutions to inform a new generation of housing approaches.<br><br>Our aim is to help to produce buildings that tread lightly on the earth. Our Ecohouse approach offers the genuine promise of sustainable, durable and climate-safe buildings that can future-proof us against twenty first century challenges.