B ehind a traditional Victorian terrace in Walthamstow, east London, is a gated mews that’s so new that sat-nav does not yet know it exists. It is here that Ben Spencer, 32 and Josh Gordon, 36, claim to have built the UK’s (and based on their research, quite possibly the world’s) most “planet-positive” development.

The scheme of ten homes isn’t just carbon neutral, but carbon negative. “A lot of sustainable developments rely on offsetting, but that takes decades to plant trees and sequester carbon. We need to create carbon-negative buildings now,” says Spencer, who with Gordon is a co-founder of the developer GS8. The homes can even be taken apart, like a big Meccano set: “The buildings’ end of life is as important as their lifetime.”

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