Come on IKEA; do the Right Thing!

Sainsbury's pioneering eco store
threatened with demolition
 by IKEA after less than 15 years

IKEA’s decision to demolish Sainsbury’s pioneering eco store on the Greenwich Peninsula after less than 15 years is both shocking and enlightening.  As everyone knows IKEA understand sustainability; right?  Their Calvinist heritage values the notion of the collective good, thrift and endurance and this philosophy is embedded in the IKEA corporate mission statement:


"Our vision is to create a better everyday life for the many people."

They develop upon their corporate mission statement, expanding it into their customer proposition:
 

"Offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them."

So how can it be that a company with such a powerful and a clearly articulated vision can believe that it is acceptable for them to be responsible for the senseless destruction of a pioneering eco building after less than 15 years?  I would argue that their unacceptable behaviour on the Greenwich Peninsula is driven by an obsession with cost not value and that this is distorting their decision making, leading to outdated thinking that is not relevant to the specific demands of the many people who occupy our crowded island; let alone the residents of Greenwich Peninsula who already suffer from dangerously high levels of atmospheric air pollution caused by road traffic.



IKEA Southampton integrates their
offer into a city centre context
well served by public transport

Prior to the recession IKEA delivered two stores in Coventry and Southampton that sort to evolve a development model that retained their distinctive blue and yellow presence but designed a solution to work in harmony with, rather than to the detriment of their host communities, locating them in urban locations, well served by public transport and adjacent to existing retail centres.  At this point I should say that we worked with IKEA on their Hillingdon and Southampton projects, so have an in-depth knowledge of both the process and the resultant development; so it is uncomfortable to say the least advising a client that what they are doing is unacceptable and in conflict with their published sustainable development objectives.

We live in an increasingly resource constrained  world, where there is growing concern about the availability and price of many common building materials, so to senselessly destroy a perfectly serviceable building after less than 15 years, is in my view immoral and totally unacceptable.   Customers expect corporations like IKEA and Sainsbury’s to do the right thing when selecting and sourcing products, undertaking their business activities and helping their customers to minimise their impacts on the environment; but fail to see the hypocrisy that is implicit in promoting demolition.

 



IKEA Hillingdon scheme included a store
 with direct access to the tube
 at the end of an existing High Street
 along with 200 affordable homes

Sainsbury’s justify their position by saying that building technology has moved on since the building was completed and that their new store will use the latest technology!  Does it therefore follow that they will be closing all of their branches over fifteen years old: clearly that would be ridiculous!  If it were not for the restrictions that they have placed on the building preventing it being re-let to one of their competitors, it would not now be threatened with demolition.

IKEA say that they intend to recycle the small portion of the demolition waste pile that they create and are also going to use a green roof on their new store.  When you bear in mind that the proposed building will be over twenty meters tall I am not sure what they believe this will achieve for local residents, but the fact that they are happy to state this as some form of compensation smacks of tokenism of the worst possible kind.

IKEA are about to submit their Reserved Matters Planning Application and once that has been rubber stamped by The Royal Borough only English Heritage and the Secretary of State can save the building!  Catherine Croft, Twentieth Century Society Director said that:

“Not only would the demolition of such a recent building be a tragic waste of energy and resources, but this supermarket is outstandingly important. It is the most innovative retail store to have been built in the UK in the last 50 years.”

It still seems inconceivable to me that either IKEA or Sainsbury’s are happy to have their brands associated with an act of such wonton destruction but they appear not to care!  Last weekend, local residents who started a campaign “No IKEA Greenwich Peninsula”, held a protest picnic in the eco-garden planted by the Woodland Trust behind the store.  They oppose the loss of a culturally significant public building and the introduction of a large, car dependant store into the heart of their community, which already experiences some of the worst air pollution in London.

I believe that many retail companies view their property activities as not really core business and are therefore able to convince themselves that different standards of behaviour apply to their property activities.  IKEA would not buy up millions of pounds worth of second hand, perfectly functional home furnishing products, only to then senselessly smash it up; as this, they would rightly judge, to be unacceptable behaviour!  Yet this is exactly what their property department are proposing!

Come on IKEA, do the right thing, remove the threat of demolition from a pioneering eco building that is less than fifteen years old and think again.  Develop a proposition that meets the needs of the many people of London by developing a store directly served by train or tube and built with the same care, craftsmanship and environmental stewardship that you demand from you furniture.

Let There be Light

Someone famous once described architecture as the manipulation of space with light and it has long been understood that daylight has a powerful effect on both our physical and mental wellbeing.  So you would have thought that we would have reached a consensus about what represents adequate daylighting within a building and would only allow buildings that meet this standard.  Well surprisingly this is far from the case and in fact many of our most iconic offices are badly lit, hampering the effectiveness of the people forced to occupy them!

 

Architecture the manipulation
of space with light

It is interesting to note that while there are standards defined in the Building Regulations for most aspects of building design those relating to natural lighting are not very onerous, only requiring a bare minimum of a 2% daylight factor for 80% of the floor area.  This means that a fifth of any floorplate can be built that does not meet even this minimum standard.  In a typical city tower with a central core the area of the floor adjacent to the core and any desks in this location rely almost exclusively on artificial lighting.

Interestingly, the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) for offices awards additional credits where 80% of the floorplate achieves a 4% daylight factor.  This is not a standard that the majority of space currently under construction is able to achieve given the excessive depth of most floorplates.

I was recently at a seminar where a developer was extolling the virtues of their highly sustainable new office development that had floors of between 12 and 18 metres from the window to the core!  While as an occupant you would be aware that there was a window, it would be provide virtually no light to your workstation if you were unfortunate enough to be sat nearest to the core.

The issue of the depth of the plan does not only affect daylighting, but also has a major effect on the occupant’s views out.  Research has shown that a good quality view is composed of elements that are close to the window, elements in the middle ground and also parts which are more distant, but to be able to perceive the exterior to this level of detail through a window requires the viewer to be quite close.

Under BREEAM a maximum of distance of 7 metres from workstation to window is defined as achieving a beneficial view out and is acknowledged by awarding a credit for buildings which achieve this standard.  If this arrangement is applied to an office floorplate with windows on both sides it would result in an overall depth of 14 metres which would also be well and evenly lit due to lighting being delivered from two sides rather than one.
 

Careful disposition of solid and glass
façade materials help prevent glare

To ensure that the workplace is comfortable it is important that glare is avoided, particularly on computer screens.  This is impossible to achieve on fully glazed facades which allow in large amounts of light but in an unregulated manner, over lighting workstations nearest to the windows but not making any significant improvement to lighting levels of the desks further into the interior. 

Façade designs that combine solid and glazed sections can overcome this problem, particularly if the façade module is coordinated with the distance between desks.  A solid to glass ratio of around 50/50 allows sufficient glass for views and daylighting while providing highly insulated solid sections that protect screens from glare and prevent unwanted solar gains and thermal losses.

It is also important where the glass is positioned as the higher the window the better the daylight distribution.  Glass below desk level provides little or no benefit to occupants and often displays just how untidy many offices are!
 

External solar shading controls
unwanted solar gains

The orientation of windows also has a significant effect on the comfort, or otherwise, of the people who inhabit the building.  North facing windows allow in diffused daylight with little direct sun, so thermal gains are prevented at the expense of increased thermal losses.  Conversely, south facing glass will experience excessive solar gain and glare if adequate external shading is not incorporated.

However it is the east and west facades which present the greatest challenge as the sun hits these surfaces at a low angle which is hard to regulate and which can cause glare and discomfort deep within the interior.  West facing glazing also presents issues of solar gain, delivering as it does a spike in heat at the end of the working day when the building has already been heated by equipment and people.  Buffering of west facing facades with other uses like escape stairs or toilets can protect office areas from these unwanted gains.

Natural lighting is an essential component of a well tempered environment and deserves careful consideration and intelligent design if it is to be delivered in a manner that enhances the perceived wellbeing of occupants, rather than causing them discomfort.  Too much or too little daylight will have direct impacts upon the productivity of occupants which can ultimately affect the productivity of an entire organisation.

As the great Kevin McCloud put it:

“Integrity and authenticity and quality and appropriateness take a little more work than simple-minded beauty”

I passionately believe that user centred design will revolutionise the design of buildings and will ultimately help to create a new sustainable architecture, in which philosophy, intent and purpose replace vacuous beauty, meaningless style and contorted form and I for one cannot wait! 

 

Move me Mother I’m Burning!

It seems strangely appropriate to be discussing PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) annual "Low Carbon Economy Index" on 2degrees, since their key finding is that with current levels of CO2 emissions this target will not be hit and we are likely to see global temperature rises of 6°C if current emissions levels continue.  To achieve the 2°C target would require cuts in carbon of 5.1% every year from now to 2050!  Keeping to the 2°C carbon budget will require unprecedented and sustained reductions over four decades. PwC's assessment is that Governments’ ambitions to limit warming to 2°C appear highly unrealistic and that up to 6°C seems to be much more likely.

 

Global warming is forecast to exceed 2°C
 target and could reach up to 6°C

To reinforce the point UN research has also recently been published showing that the last decade has been the hottest since records began and that this increase in temperature is accompanied by weather patterns that are becoming more extreme and unpredictable.  Yet some politicians, particularly those on the right, seems to think that fracking is a good idea to address our fast approaching energy supply crisis and that yet more CO2 released into the environment will be alright: really?

 

So what should government be doing with this intelligence and how should policy be developed to respond to a threat of global significance?  Well I would suggest that there are a number of polices that should be adopted immediately to ensure that our economy is safeguarded from these risks and is optimised to address the threats and opportunities that this environmental crisis presents.

The first and most important step is to base all of our future energy policies on the fact that we have dramatically reduced demand through a comprehensive and thorough refurbishment campaign.  The UK should invest in “negawatts” before it spends even a single penny on new power generation capacity.

I am not saying that this is an easy or risk free strategy, but I believe that it is essential if we are to make the strategic adjustments that are required to rebalance our economy, dramatically cut our reliance on imported gas and nuclear power and create a maximum demand that can be met by renewable technologies with appropriate, intelligent power storage solutions.

To achieve the refurbishment and performance upgrade of our entire existing building stock will require a paradigm shift in the property and construction industries along with a concerted and collective effort not achieved since the war.  I would argue that it is far too important to be left to 5 year government terms or party politics and may even demand a new political consensus.

Training will be required to create an army of highly skilled building technicians able to undertake this work of national importance; creating a valuable and productive workforce from our currently underemployed youth.  The legacy of this period of national renewal will be a new model construction industry, populated by professional and highly skilled workers able to deliver new build and refurbishment projects to outstanding levels of performance.

But we should not stop there!  As part of the revolution we should democratise and decentralise power generation by embedding localised generation throughout the country, close or better still, within existing communities.  This will change occupant behaviour by making each householder or building operator a producer rather than simply a consumer and has the potential to deliver up to 30% energy savings simply by cutting out transmission losses that occur between remote power stations and the distant communities they supply.

This decentralised approach to power generation makes it possible to harness the waste heat that is created as part of the generation process and use it to directly heat buildings and provide hot water.  To facilitate Combined Heat and Power(CHP) or better still Combined Cooling Heat and Power (CCHP) systems will require new Community Infrastructure in the form of thermal mains that will transport heat between power plants and buildings.  Investment will also be required to increase thermal storage capacity to help smooth the jagged delivery of renewable solar thermal heating systems.

The UK has signed up to achieve an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 yet there is still no coherent policy linking supply with demand.  Time is fast running out to make the scale and magnitude of changes within our economy to meet our international commitments and even those who see nuclear power as the only answer realise that it is unlikely to be able to deliver sufficient capacity quickly enough to prevent the lights going out in the not too distant future.  Urgent reduction of demand must be commenced immediately and pursued with a combination of grant “carrots” and taxation “sticks” to encourage the market to do the right thing.

Regulatory constraints should be developed which ensure that all new development is carbon positive by 2020 and that capitol receipts from new carbon taxation are reinvested in the refurbishment and renewal of our existing building stock, 80% of which will still be in use by 2050.  We need to stop building the “Archicouture” of the past, with its obsession with style and shape making, but devoid of meaning, and instead develop a New Sustainable Architecture able to address the urgent issues of our age.

A Campaign for Real Architecture

I have long been of the opinion that we are on the threshold of a period of rapid and revolutionary change, which remains imminent, but also stubbornly illusive!  It is now over a hundred years since the birth of modernism, yet we continue to design most modern buildings in a style that has remained fundamentally unchanged over this period.



A thermally inefficient
 fully glazed office facade



The fully glazed façade remains the default answer for office and commercial buildings and is increasingly common in residential, hotels, schools and in fact anything that needs to be perceived by its target market as “premium” or “luxury”.  I have even had conversations with one very “blue chip” developer who insists that all their luxury housing is designed in a glass walled modern style.

It is almost as if the 1970’s energy crisis never happened; or that the climate change deniers have actually been proven to have been right all along!  We recently passed the significant threshold of 400 parts per million level for atmospheric CO² yet still nothing changes.  There is now a detailed body of knowledge regarding envelope performance along with the potential for passive heating, cooling lighting and ventilation, yet the tyranny of the initial dumb image persists.

To accompany this lack of any real and concerted action there seems to have been an exponential growth in the rhetoric supporting sustainable development, with professional, repeat clients all arguing that this is the future while continuing to procure buildings from the past.  Now, while I accept that buildings take a long while to come to fruition, there is no evidence that I can detect, of any real or concerted change.

So what will be that catalyst that will trigger the sustainable architecture revolution?  The first shoots may well be the proliferation of groups that promote alternative metrics to measure building projects and promote sustainable development.  BREEAM and LEED are the most obvious of these but there is now a long and growing list including:

Energy Savings Trust

Society for the Environment

Sponge

The Usable Building Trust

Carbon Buzz

Honest Buildings

Recently, the Feeling Good Foundation was established, within the Building Centre Trust,  to research and promote how the built environment can be designed specifically to enhance the wellbeing of occupants.  One of the Foundations key objectives is to establish what constitutes value and what metrics should be used to measure wellbeing in the built environment.  I believe that this area represents the missing link and that once we are able to accurately assess the additional value that sustainable buildings create through improved occupant performance then we will finally be able to make a robust business case which shows a return on the investment required to deliver sustainable buildings through improved occupant productivity.

There are three areas that I believe are key to achieving the paradigm shift that is required if we are to ensure sustainable development becomes the norm.

People

The design process for all projects must place the wants needs and desires of building users at the heart of the process.  This will be a particular challenge for speculative developments where specific user groups are not known and is likely to drive innovation and the development of new building arrangements with more flexible and diverse spaces and environments.

Procurement

One of the most intractable barriers to sustainable development is the manner in which we buy buildings.  It is essential that we move away from lowest cost tendering to procurement systems that incentivise improved performance.  While there have been some isolated instances where this has been tested, most notably in the Building Schools for the Future programme the construction supply chain must be engaged to deliver better performing buildings and should be rewarded when this is achieved.  This would significantly change the nature of the process, placing more emphasis on design and encourage ongoing relationships between the construction industry and occupiers post completion.

Performance

It is essential that we understand how our existing building stock is performing so that investment can be targeted appropriately.  I would advocate that we should demand that all buildings must display their energy performance on a read out adjacent to the front door and that this data should be used to identify the best performing 25% of each building type with a green light, the middle 50% with an amber light and the worst 25% with a red light.  Imagine a street of houses where the good the bad and the ugly are made public; I am convinced that this really would make significant change happen extremely quickly!

There are two other factors that are required to create the necessary confidence for individuals and institutions to invest.  The Government needs to sets a clear policy framework to encourage sustainable development and then must show perseverance and not keep tinkering with it.  Unfortunately I suspect that this may be the biggest barrier of them all!

Rebuilding Broken Britain

To create enduring value within our economy I believe that we need to radically change not only the nature of the buildings that we build, but also, the way that we procure them.  To achieve holistically sustainable buildings it is essential that the procurement process is intelligent and able to assess and reconcile the social, economic and environmental aspects of every project.  However, this is not currently the case, as is amply demonstrated by the current fashion for meaningless architectural “iconography” being built in the City of London.



These projects have all been procured by professional, repeat clients, who claim to take sustainability seriously.  So why are they all building painfully fashionable, contorted building forms that are expensive, spatially compromised, have thermally inefficient fully glazed facades with deep plans that are impossible to daylight?  They have no doubt been encouraged to take this path by senior planners in the City who make powerful recommendations as to which “starchitects” work they would like to see added next to the City’s architectural zoo.  I would argue that developers of these schemes have simply applied a green wrapper to their activities and continued with business as usual, rather than embedding sustainable development at the core of their activities.

To achieve the required paradigm shift, we need to select design team members for their demonstrable track record of innovation in the field of sustainable development.  Project specific briefs should be prepared and published that define what is to be built and what key performance indicators will be used to judge the success of completed projects.  These indicators must include annual occupant satisfaction surveys, operational energy expenditure along with maintenance expenditure, with outcomes made publically accessible: after all, most of these buildings ultimately become assets of our pension funds!

I believe that we need to arrest the decline in quality and fitness for purpose of development; where we can calculate the cost of everything but having little or no understanding of where construction creates value.  To be relevant we must sever the link between construction output and the creation of investment assets whose value bears little or no relation to the performance of the building.  The fact that we are still debating if a “green premium” or a “brown discount” exists is powerful evidence that we are unable to effective ascribe value to the products created by our industry.  In my opinion Quantity Surveyors are obsolete and should be retrained to become Value Managers, able to orchestrate and create enduring value for clients and the wider UK economy.  This would be a good first step in redefining the why that teams interact, smashing professional silos can be and remade to encourage the sustainable outcomes that are urgently required.

Intelligent procurement must incorporate local procurement, so that communities that experience development receive social and economic benefit from the process.  We must stop packaging up ever larger parcels of development and instead place more, smaller, lower value contracts with locally based small and medium sized companies (SME’s) to create more jobs and spread construction expenditure more equitably throughout the UK.  Local firms who will be forced to live with the products of their labours, whereas national or international builders are far less accountable to the communities who inherit the buildings that they deliver and where the value that is created by the process benefits remote shareholders rather than communities.

The idea of local procurement should I believe be taken further with the construction industry supporting locally manufactured building products and materials that also create jobs and value.  This philosophy needs to be incorporated at the brief stage, requiring design and delivery teams to embrace the notion of the final building being Made in Britain, with public reporting of the outcome.  This initiative could drive a fundamental socio-political shift, moving away from a reliance on services to create value, restoring the balance the in the UK economy by supporting manufacturing.

There is a strong belief that Design & Build is the best answer for most buildings and clients.  However, as the recession has continued to bite it is noticeable how the amount of “design” that is being undertaken by contractors has dramatically reduced.  It is essential that Project Managers undertake detailed analysis of tender returns, if clients are to get the buildings that they think that they are buying, rather than the best that the contractor can cobble together without the correct amount of timely, expert detailed design.

Large organisations are changing their terms and conditions, increasing the time that suppliers have to wait to be paid; contractor Carillion now expect suppliers to wait 120 days to receive payment.  This creates cash flow issues further down the supply chain and can result in small, well run companies going out of business.  Associated with this issue is the protracted nature of contractual negotiations, demands to agree to unfair and ultimately uninsurable terms and conditions, resulting in significant delay in the period from starting work to receipt of the first payment.  It is essential that the government takes urgent action to get the money moving and should start by insisting that all appointments are agreed prior to commencement and strict 30 days terms are mandatory.

We must increase investment in training and education to equip our workforce with the skill, knowledge and expertise required to add sustainable value, regardless of the individual’s role in the supply chain. Crucially, I believe that we need to invest in vocational training to radically improve skill levels within our sector and create a workforce who are able to deliver construction to the higher levels of performance required.  The industry must offer great career opportunities for all regardless of gender.

For the construction sector to once again become an engine for growth in the UK economy then investment must be focused not on iconic new build schemes but instead on the refurbishment of our existing building stock.  We urgently need to invest in improving the performance of our existing buildings now!  This will create jobs, establish the essential missing link between energy efficiency and energy supply, reduce our reliance on expensive imported energy and ultimately reduce the number and cost of the next generation of nuclear power stations that we will be forced to buy from aboard if we are to keep the lights on.

To rebuild broken Britain sustainably we need to radically change the things that we build, along with the ways that we procure them.  Professional boundaries need to be challenged and new bodies established.  I would argue that none of the existing professional bodies can provide the leadership needed and what we require is an Institution for Sustainable Development, open to all professions and their clients, which can effectively research, promote and lobby for change.

Localism should be reinterpreted to demand that the value created by development directly benefits the communities that host development, creating jobs and economic activity close to the site.  On a national scale we should develop a new vernacular architecture using materials and products that are Made in Britain, including the development of upcycled products that convert waste materials into new construction products and materials.  Fundamentally we need to understand, through compulsory Display Energy Certificates (DEC), how every building in the UK is performing and then use this intelligence to guide a national refurbishment mission to dramatically improve performance.

This piece was first published in Sustain Magazine May/June 2013

Black Thoughts on Ecobuild

Well that’s ecobuild over for another year, and I for one say good!  In many ways I think that ecobuild reflects many of the barriers that are preventing our industry delivering the step-change that is required to address the pressing issues of our age.  As I walked around the vast, artificially conditioned interior of ExCel London what struck me most powerfully was the gap between presentation and reality.

Every product has
been greenwashed!

In the evolution of sustainable design I believe that we have really not changed much at all; all that has changed is the words that we use to describe products and the spin that is used to emphasise their virtues.  Ecobuild is dominated by major global construction product manufacturers and suppliers all of whom have added words like “eco” or “green” to the descriptions of their products and then, in the vast majority of cases, simply continued with business as usual.

The high cost of exhibiting at the show prevents most small companies and start-ups from displaying their wares, so almost all of the really interesting things that one found in the early shows, back in the good old days at Earls Court, have now disappeared.  For me to continue to make the annual pilgrimage to the Royal Docks, this must change.  I think that as the UK’s largest construction trade show there is a responsibility incumbent upon UBM, the franchises new owners to give something back, and this should be in the form of small low or no cost stands for small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s) and start-ups.

As a practice, we have an initiative called Product of the Month where we ask our team to identify innovative sustainable building products and materials.  On average we have noted that it takes at somewhere between 3 and 5 years for the products that we find to appear at ecobuild.  Clearly, this would be cut dramatically if they were able to exhibit at low or no cost.  Also, by gaining exposure sooner they are more likely to survive and thrive.



The international nature of the industry is reflected at ecobuild, with significant space given over to foreign firms, with a rapid growth in those coming from China.  Many contractors now boast about having their own global supply chain, able to source products direct from Chinese manufacturers, cutting out the middle men.  But is this really a sustainable model for the UK economy?

I passionately believe that we need to rebalance our economy by growing our manufacturing sector.  This is essential if we are to create the range of jobs that we need to achieve full employment and long term social cohesion.  Construction products and materials manufactured and sourced from the UK create jobs and ensure that value is created in the UK and not aboard.  Removing long distance supply chains also delivers easy cuts in embedded carbon, which is increasingly important as we cut operational energy.

Glabal trade,
large carbon footprint!

Local sourcing of construction labour will ensure that host communities benefit from the construction process, but I would like this principle extended.  Small and medium scale (SME) businesses create jobs locally and in greater numbers than large national or international firms.  I would like to see all state funded procurement favour local small businesses for all contracts below £5 million.  Locally designed and built projects will help reconnect the property industry with the communities that we should be serving, correcting the distortions that have occurred due to property being seen primarily as an investment asset class rather than a means of enhancing the efficiency and wellbeing of building occupiers.

There is a pressing need for radical change to make the construction industry relevant and capable of addressing the concerns of our age.  The future must be small, local and accountable if we are to deliver intrinsically sustainable development.

Phoenix HQ - Update No. 4

In the month and a half since the last blog work has continued on the Phoenix HQ despite the bad weather. When the last post was written the work that was happening on site included the installation of the SIPs, the blockwork and the installation of the zinc.

 Zinc Roof - 29.01.2013

This month the zinc has been moved from the walls to the roof so that, although no visible progress has been made for the casual passer by. The majority of the roof is now covered and work can progress on large areas of the first floor without fear of water damage.

Acoustic linings on roof - 28.02.2013

Where the zinc has been installed and the roof is water tight the team on site have been fixing a layer of rockwool to the internal face of the roof to create an acoustic barrier. A layer of either plasterboard or OSB is then fixed on top of this. Once these have been installed they will need to be painted before first fix begins.

 

Sample of electrical conduits - 11.02.2013

In preparation of first fix commencing we have started to see samples of what the M&E sub-contractors are proposing. With the exposed blockwork and minimal finishes these are of particular importance as they will be more visible than in an ordinary building.

Credit Union Screed - 11.02.2013

Now that the blockwork is complete on the ground floor the team have been progressing with the screed floor. So far the entirety of the screed in Phase 1 is complete and Phase 2 should have been finished in time for the next blog.

Breaking ground - 20.02.2013

As well as exciting things happening on the inside of the main building, work has continued around the rest of the site. The work required to reinforce the rear site wall has been completed and the foundations for the Barn and Substation are now in place. 

By the next update the Barn's frame and SIPs will have been installed and first fix will have commenced. The internal walls will also have been painted, which means we will be able to start getting an impression of what the internal spaces will feel like.

 The site - 28.02.2013

Re-Imagining Design and Embedding Sustainability

Sustainable design is something that all architects do now; right?  It’s on every practices website, included in all their presentations and has been totally integrated into the way all buildings are designed.  Even the RIBA is now belatedly “on message”, promoting the idea that buildings should be designed to be sustainable.

 

Mies van der Rohe glass skyscraper
 concept designed in 1919

 So, how come the buildings that we are constructing now have not changed significantly since the birth of modernism almost one hundred years ago?  Mies van der Rohe published his revolutionary concept for a glass clad skyscraper back in 1921 and you could argue that we have been repeating this typology, with only minor amendments, ever since.  Is the Shard not just a less efficient more compromised variant of this underlying philosophical position?

What has changed is the rhetoric that accompanies each of these increasingly contorted iconic projects; all of which claim to be exemplars of sustainable development.  Clearly, it is not only architects who are guilty of not walking the talk when it comes to sustainability; developers, funding institutions, governments and local authorities are all rebranding their particular form of “business as usual” in a new recycled paper wrapper!

Renzo Piano all glass

 Shard nearing completion 2013

 It is my strongly held belief that this incremental improvement approach is no longer sufficient and what is required is a fundamental reappraisal of why, what and how we build.  In short, I believe that we are about to enter a period of rapid and revolutionary change that will result in re-imagining design and the development of an entirely new Sustainable Architecture, shaped by an understanding of the challenges that we face and therefore directly relevant to the concerns of our age.

To achieve the necessary paradigm shift we must challenge some deeply ingrained behaviours and beliefs and fundamentally re-evaluate the reasons why we build at all. This process must start by placing social sustainability and needs of building users at the heart of the design process.  It is no surprise that the best examples of sustainable design are conceived when the building’s users are known before design commences.  Also the greatest value that a building design can create is not in energy savings but in helping to improve the productivity of the people who work in them.  To achieve this added value it is essential that buildings are designed from the inside and the needs of the user out.  This philosophical approach creates massive opportunities for creativity and innovation, once the dead hand of style is rejected, in favour of a new sustainable building aesthetic where each design decision is directly informed by its social, economic and environmental issues.

Our CAFOD project, that I will be presenting at the UKGBC’s Re-Imagining Design course on the 27^th February, is a good example of this approach.  The key aspect of the project’s evolution was that we did not win the commission with an image of a completed building, but instead explained how we would assist them, as a non-expert client, to develop a bespoke; user centred sustainable solution, shaped to fit their immediate needs and facilitate organisational change.

Black Bio Climatic office

 tower concept 2005

This approach is in stark contrast to the vast majority of speculative commercial buildings, which are conceived primarily as investment assets and whose appearance and architectural style are determined at inception.  This procurement process, I would argue, results in the current fashion for more and more contorted building forms, as design teams strive to make the most remarkable, arresting images, rather than the most sustainable designs, to secure commissions.

If we are to make the UK’s building stock more sustainable I believe it is essential that funding institutions only agree to invest our pension contributions into demonstrably sustainable buildings.  This will change overnight what gets commissioned, since developers want to be able to sell their completed developments so that they can reinvest profits into the next development opportunity.  It will also result in less risk and more predictable returns for the funds, since sustainable buildings will either command a “green premium” because they are more desirable or at worst will not experience a “brown discount” due to their increased occupation costs.

In re-imagining design I believe that we need to place social sustainability at the heart of the design process, with the explicit intention of delivering buildings that create value by demonstrably improving the performance of the people who occupy them. This philosophical shift will finally close the cost benefit gap that makes investing in higher performance difficult to justify.  Over time the quality and value of the UK’s building stock will increase, creating value and safe guarding the investments that ultimately fund our retirement.  A paradigm shift of this magnitude will create a New Sustainable Architecture that is relevant and valuable.  As Mies van der Rohe put so succinctly;

“Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space”

Surely the will of our epoch calls for urgent, radical change; re-imagining design to deliver buildings that create enduring value for the people who use them, the organisations that own them and the society that they are part of.

Don’t delay, the future starts today!

Phoenix HQ November Update

This is the second of an on-going series of blogs that aim to create a photographic log of the construction process at the Phoenix HQ.

At the end of October (click here to view previous blog) a couple of bays had been erected and we could look forward to the completion of the first half of the frame by the end of the month.

Site visit 01.11.2012

When we next returned to site at the beginning of the month the first half of the composite frame had been erected and the construction team were starting preparation for the first floor’s metal deck to be laid.

 

Site visit 08.11.2012

One week later the metal deck was down, and for the first time we were able to gain access to the first floor. At this point the scale of the spaces had started to become more apparent and we were able to envisage how it will feel when the building is in use.

 

 

Site visit 20.11.2012

 

After a two week absence from site the concrete for first floor slab had been laid and work is currently progressing with attaching the SIPs to the composite frame, although there have been some delays due to high winds.

 

Site visit 22.11.2012

 

Phase II of the frame started on the 26^th of November and will be complete within the next 3 weeks, when the overall mass of the building should become clearly visible. Concurrent with this, the blockwork is due to commence on the ground floor any day now and the layout of the public spaces and lift shafts will start to take shape. This should all be complete by the 6^th of January when first fix is due to commence.