What life is like inside an eco-friendly community

If developers had got their way, Ashley Vale would be just another faceless estate. Sanjida O'Connell meets the Bristol residents who joined forces to create a unique, eco-friendly community.

As you travel by train through Bristol there is one area that stands out from all the city's terraces, graffitied walls and gritty flyovers. It nestles in a green bowl – a patchwork of allotments, a mini nature reserve, a city farm and, at the bottom, a collection of surreal-looking houses made of copper, wood and glass in strange shapes, glinting with solar panels. This oasis of calm is Ashley Vale, a collection of 26 eco-houses that were designed and hand-built by local residents in response to a developer attempting to take over a brownfield site in the St Werburgh's district.

The project began in 2000 when a developer proposed turning a scaffolding yard into a housing estate. Local residents banded together and formed AVAG, the Ashley Vale Action Group, to oppose the development and put forward their own, alternative, vision. They won their case – and the right to build a sustainable, mixed-use community on the yard – but had to work quickly to buy the land.

The idea was to divide the two-acre plot into 26 and sell each section individually. Jackson Moulding, now a self-build consultant, and his partner, Anna Hope, were among the original residents who opposed the developer but hadn't thought about buying a plot themselves. "I got involved because I was working in environmental areas and wanted to push whatever happened here to be sustainable," says Moulding, "I wasn't there to build my own house, but then thought I should be involved." Moulding and Hope were among the last people to end up with a plot of land – one of the smaller sections in an awkward wedge-shape they have turned to their advantage.

Once all the land had been bought, the self-builders formed a co-op and met three times a week for over a year to design houses with their neighbours-to-be. The first problem they faced was that the plot was covered in concrete, which would be difficult to remove and result in landfill. So they decided to keep the concrete and treat it as a raft, building timber frames on top. Everyone had to design their houses themselves. "I read lots of books and doodled on beer mats," says Jonnie Brockwell, an engineer. Hope and Moulding built a very cute balsa model and Ian and Jane Coles, who work for Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity, "drew it out on squared paper and paced up and down other people's houses to find out how big they were".

Most people had no or little building experience, nor were they primarily motivated by the idea of creating their own eco-houses. Moulding, like most of the self-builders, says, "We couldn't even afford to buy a small terrace house in this area – but we knew we could afford a bigger house if we designed and built it ourselves." Ian Coles says: "It was a very steep learning curve. I went from having an IT job to being in charge of a building site."

more from the Independent