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Key information

Funding
Self-funded
School
Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society
Location
Edinburgh
Delivery type
Full-time, Part-time
Start date
September

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.

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.

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.

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.

Project supervisor

Staff contributing to this research area include:

Susan Roaf

Professor Emeritus

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Fan Wang

Assistant Professor

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Entry requirements

Candidate criteria

We welcome applications from suitably qualified candidates. Please visit our How to apply page.

Funding information

StatusFull TimePart Time
Scotland£5,006£2,503
England / Wales / N Ireland£5,006£2,503
International£19,816£9,908
  • Status: Your residency status is usually defined as the country where you have been ordinarily resident for the three years before the start of your course.
  • International: 'International' includes applicants from European Union countries who do not hold Pre-Settled or Settled status in UK. (This does not include students from the Republic of Ireland - see above).

We offer a number of competitive funded scholarships for research degrees. Full or partial support may be available for well-qualified candidates from UK research councils, research pools, charities or industry.

View our full range of scholarships.

Why Heriot-Watt

We're the top university in Scotland for graduate outcomes which means that more of our graduates are employed or in postgraduate education than any other institution in the country and we ranked 5th in the UK.

We're also rated number one in the UK for CEO or MD roles, meaning more of our graduates go on to become CEOs or MDs than any other university in the whole of the UK. On top of that, we have beautiful campuses, across the globe, so you'll get a truly international education. Our Edinburgh Campus is home to Oriam, Scotland's National Sports Performance Centre combined with plenty of wellbeing resources, prioritising fitness and mental health for all students. Our Global Research Institutes look at solving real world issues such as climate change and saving our oceans as well as working on the next medical technological breakthrough and the future of AI and robots.

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