Save Sainsbury's Greenwich

So it is now official, Sainsbury's are to close their pioneering low energy supermarket in Greenwich after being open for less than 15 years and if approved it will be demolished to make way for an IKEA.  So a building that was awarded the RIBA Journal Sustainability Award in 2000 and was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, the largest prize in British Architecture, the same year will be torn down after such a short period of time with barely a passing comment.


Is the sun about to set on
Sainsbury's Greenwich
 after less than 15 years trading?

We'll not as far as I am concerned!  You see I spent nearly five years of my early career developing the concept for what was then a pioneering development.  My team spent long hours designing a building that would redefine retail architecture and challenge the belief at the time, that all retailers required from their buildings was something to keep the customers, the technology required to moderate the internal environment and the fridges and freezers out of the rain.  The norm was for a dark, windowless interior, that was ultimately little more than a poorly built and badly performing shed, with no consideration given to customer comfort.  Lighting, heating and cooling were all achieved with inefficient mechanical systems, that wasted energy and did nothing to improve the conditions that customers were expected to endure.

So why is it considered obsolete and ready for demolition after such a short period of time?  On one level it is a victim of its own success; as since opening it has been well received by customers, achieving the highest Customer Satisfaction Index score for any Sainsbury's within the first year of trading.  As the number of people living on the peninsular has increased the store trade has outgrown the building and Sainsbury's want to move 500 meters away to a new store that will be three times the size and offer food and non-food along with an internet hub to serve online customers.  So the building is well liked and successful but still cannot find an alternative use?

So this is what gets me really annoyed, the reason why it cannot be relet to another tenant is that Sainsbury's will have in place a restrictive covenant on the building as part of their deal with the developer of their new store, preventing it from being used for food retailing.  I believe that this is anti-competitive and is a flagrant abuse of the planning system which originally granted consent for the development.  I have good memories of many meetings with English Partnerships and the London Borough of Greenwich as they considered our proposals and ensured that they were in keeping with local and national planning policies.  This process placed restrictions on the eventual consent including a requirement to review and reduce car parking provision over time and another to prevent extension in the first 10 years.  What none of us envisaged at the time was that once consent was granted it could be removed by Sainsbury's without any further democratic consideration and that by granting consent for retail use they could both have their cake and eat it, benefitting from the enhanced value of the asset that the consent crystallised but able to limit its scope so that only non-competing retailers could benefit when it no longer fulfilled Sainsbury's requirements.

To destroy an exemplar of
sustainable design best practice
 would be an act of vandalism
 that must not be permitted

This cannot be right.  If this restrictive covenant were not in place I am sure that there would be a long list of food retailers who would be only too willing to move in and pay the generous rents common in the sector.  The buildings would continue to be economically sustainable, the community would have a greater choice of where to shop and the environment would not be impacted by the destruction of carbon intensive construction after such a pitifully short period of time.  I feel very passionate about this; no architect should see their work destroyed as a result of underhand, un-democratic behaviour and not object.  The building is a good building and should not be demolished.  It must become a test case for the rhetoric that is now widely exposed by the sector to justify its dominant position in the nation's food supply chain.  It is not acceptable to promise communities sustainable development to gain planning consents simply to renege on those undertakings when it suits.  The government must urgently review restrictive covenant legislation to close this anti-competition loophole to prevent more perfectly serviceable buildings being destroyed to safeguard the self-interest of food retailers or others who would limit the use of land or buildings that they no longer require.  A free market must demand that this is the case and that the local communities that grant consent must be the ultimate arbiters of what can and cannot be done on any site.  If not, there is a real threat that the sector will be painted with the anti-competitive criticism that Tesco has previously been accused of.

 

Please support our campaign to #stopIKEA and #SaveSainsburysGreenwich by signing our online petition at:

 

http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/stopikea

Archicouture

ar·chi·cou·ture

/ˈärkiˌ/ko͞oˈto͝or/

Noun

1. The art or practice of designing and constructing buildings from the outside in.

2. Architecture where the style and appearance of a building is of ultimate importance

3. The creation of hollow and meaningless iconography which is ultimately inhumane and irrelevant to the concerns of our age.

Synonyms:

Architecture
Couture
 
While studying to be an architect I remember a lecture from Jeremy Lowe, our History tutor, on the evolution of styles in architecture.  It transpires that there are three distinct stages in the evolution of any particular style.  Initially, when a new style is first established it manifests itself in a rather crude manner.  Once people have worked out the underlying rules and principles and mastered their application, the trues and purest manifestation of the style emerges, often referred to as the “high” period; for example “high gothic”.  The final phase in the evolution of a style is characterised by pastiche as characteristics, elements and forms become over-elaborate and exaggerated, often to the point where the original characteristics are caricatured and become almost unrecognisable.

So you may ask, what has all this “arty bollocks” got to do with buildings, architecture and sustainability?  Well, it is my belief that we are on the threshold of a period of rapid and revolutionary change and that when we examine the buildings that we are making now it is clear that we are witnessing the death of modernism, as we make way for a new sustainable architecture.  Many of the most iconic buildings realised over the recent past are caricatures, the architectural equivalent of “gurning”, with designers trying to outdo each other with more complex and contorted form; with ever diminishing relevance.  Take for example, the Olympic swimming pool, the Walkie Talkie or at a smaller scale the ArcelorMittal Orbit.  Each one invests significant money, materials and energy to take a perverse shape which offers little or no additional value to the user experience.

Olympic Swimming Pool:
"Would you like wedges with that"?

The swimming pool was too small during the games, requiring two large wedges to be jammed into its flanks to accommodate the required seating.  While I am sure that it will win the Stirling Prize next year, because it is so achingly beautiful, in a time of austerity, I believe that we should demand more than dumb beauty from a public building costing more than £250 million and let’s not forget that the practice pool is not even naturally lit and the tall, arching north east and south west facades are fully glazed with no external shading and will suffer from both excessive solar gains and thermal losses.

The car melting genius of
the Walkie Talkie building

The Walkie Talkie building, nearing completion in the City, is only distinguished by is bulky deep plan and the random curves of its facades.  There have already been complaints that the fully glazed, concave south elevation is causing some unforeseen impacts on it immediate context, acting as an enormous focusing mirror and cooking cars and people on the surrounding streets!  Just think what could have been achieved if the manipulation of the suns energy had been part of the brief for the development rather than an unfortunate, unintended consequence!  It could have resulted in the design of an office tower where every desk received generous daylight, where glare was prevented by intelligent façade design and where every occupant was within 7 metres of a window and a view.

The contorted, "gurning" nightmare
 that is the Orbit Tower

In many ways I find the Orbit Tower the most disappointing of all; I have a great respect for the work of Anish Kapoor and the way he combines material and form to change our perception of ourselves and the world we inhabit.  I believe that the ability of the artist to make people think differently about the planet and our relationship with it is a powerful weapon in the battle to prevent climate change.  Works like his Cloud Gate in Chicago harness form to change the viewer’s perception of both the city and themselves.  However, the Orbit Tower, in my opinion, lacks any philosophical intent and instead resorts to meaningless shape making.  There is an almost wilful disregard for structural logic and materials efficiency that results in a structure lacking in grace and elegance, looking like it is the aftermath of a catastrophic structural failure.  Surely not the finest work from the team at Arup’s, although it is slightly reassuring to see that engineers are as susceptible to the cult of the meaningless icon as architects are.

So I would like to propose that we create a new category for these stylistically driven projects, “archicouture” and let it embrace any work that places shape making and formal gymnastics at the centre of the design process.  Then let’s make a rule that says, like couture in fashion, it is only acceptable for work of this type to be undertaken for the sole use and occupation by wealthy, private clients and that these buildings are only used by the public on a totally discretionary basis.  Then we can focus our resources on the development of projects that are anti-iconic and instead are focused on the wants, needs and desires of their intended users.  We can insist that proposals are philosophically rather than stylistically driven and that procurement processes judge intent rather than appearance when selecting teams for all publically accessible buildings including schools, hospitals, shops, offices and crucially housing.  The revolution, as Billy Bragg once said, is only a tee shirt away, so let’s make it an organic, fairtrade, unbleached and vegetable dyed one!

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! 

 

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

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!

BOB 3: Ethical + Fiscal = Inevitable

A group of carefully selected building industry leaders recently gathered for the latest Breakfast on Black held at The Fire Station in Waterloo.  After a hearty breakfast guests were treated to an informative and challenging presentation from Richard Francis, Director of Sustainability at Gardiner and Theobald. 



Richard Francis
Director of Sustainability
Gardiner and Theobald



Richard’s presentation “Ethical + Fiscal = Inevitable” was delivered with his trademark combination of transatlantic easy style and powerful analysis of the challenges facing the construction industry.  His presentation was split into four sections coving both the immediate drivers for change along with those that he has identified as looming just beyond the horizon.  He neatly summarises the journey ahead as the progression from beauty pageant to talent show, illustrating the need for evidence based decision making along with more intelligent procurement.

Drivers

Richard started by identifying the proliferation in regulations that are being developed to try to achieve more sustainable outcomes.  He made the point that when looked at as a whole there are some key facts that can be identified; that the direction of regulation is to encourage disclosure which leads to transparency and that transparency is essential to allow a market to be created.

The market that is emerging is characterised by wider choice, with smarter occupiers demanding shorter leases and more flexibility.  He posed the question as to why the property industry insists on using outdated names like “landlord” and “tenant” rather than “supplier” and “customer”; questioning if changing names would help to encourage improved quality and higher standards of aftercare.

He reviewed the current state of the market and identified that there has been a dramatic growth in the amount of available second hand property on the market which has increased from about 3 million square feet in 2000 to over 13 million square feet by 2011.

When investors, developers and occupiers are asked to identify the drivers that they believe will lead to property becoming obsolete in the next 5 years, they all identify energy efficiency as either the first or second most likely cause.

Change

Richard characterised the market as in a state of rapid and multifaceted change, with buildings increasingly being judged on how they perform, with savvy occupiers scrutinising certifications like BREEAM and LEED assessments and demanding evidence that actual performance in use is as predicted before they are willing to sign-up.  He sees a growing trend that is moving away from simply quantifying cost to growing importance placed on assessing value.

He illustrated this trend with the fact that 10 years ago it was hard to define, measure or value green buildings, but that over this period specialist knowledge relating to sustainability has become more generally accepted and that this has lead to a transformation of the market as a whole.  He illustrated this point with a quote from Jones Lang Lasalle 2011 Perspectives on Sustainability report:

“Five years ago, a corporate real estate executive might have thought sustainability was a costly way to make the company look good to employees. Two years ago, that same executive probably focused on energy management as a way to save money in the short run. Today, he or she may be pursuing green strategies that enhance employee productivity”.

For most companies, property costs are normally amoungst their top three highest costs, along with those associated with employing their personnel.  In striving for value it is essential that the effect that building design has on occupant behaviour is more deeply understood.  Richard made the powerful point that people are the crucial, but until now overlooked, economic component of sustainability.

He reinforced this with the 90% rule; namely that 90% of most organisations environmental impacts come from property occupation, that 90% of most individuals working life is spent indoors and that 90% of whole life costs can be directly attributed to their personnel.

When senior executives are asked about the relationship between productivity and sustainability over ²/₃ of respondents expect more sustainable buildings to facilitate their people being more productive, and that these productivity gains represent the largest potential economic benefit that sustainable buildings can deliver.

Economics

While Richard acknowledged that the notion of sustainable buildings commanding a premium is difficult to prove, there is he contends a growing body of evidence that this may be the case.  He presented data drawn for the UK, Europe and the US which quantified this “green premium” at somewhere between 3 and 8%.  He also explored the notion of a “brown discount” where poorly performing stock is financially penalised by the market; demonstrating that increased energy costs could account for as much as £3.00 per square foot.

He posed the question if this approach were applied to occupant productivity what would that do to the value of the best and worst performing examples?  As CBRE identified in their 2011 publication "Sustainability the Great Differentiator", a 10% increase in performance could easily equate to added values equilivalant in many cases to an organisations total rent.  Richard went on to highlight that total staffing costs equate to 10 times total property costs (design, build, operate and maintain) for a building with a typical 30 year lifecycle.

Next Steps

Richard concluded his presentation with his take on what the future may look like. He challenged the way buildings are valued, based on historic performance and taking little or no account of performance in use or wider sustainability issues.  He expressed his opinion that due diligence processes are being adopted by many larger occupiers to properly assess buildings and that this approach provide a good indication of the likely direction of travel of the industry as a whole.

He explored the subliminal messages that property performance conveys about brands and how this association is likely to drive increasing demands for higher performing buildings that reflect wider brand values.  He asked why should customers trust companies who cannot manage their assets and people well and by implication why should they be trusted with our resources?

In thinking about what a brands building says about the way they value their people Richard made the connection between a commitment to sustainability and the ability to build loyalty, engagement, efficiency and pride among its workforce.  As Richard put it:

“if you think it is just about the building, you are missing a giant opportunity”

He finished off his inspirational presentation with a checklist of key actions that should be adopted to ensure more sustainable outcomes:

•         Recognise the importance of performance

•         Understand the limitations of existing standards

•         Think beyond compliance

•         Understand how buildings enhance mission

•         Realise that items with the greatest benefits often have the least costs

•         Anticipate change by reverting to principles

I am left thinking that there is a serious disconnect in the property industry that is directly created in the way that buildings are viewed primarily as investment vehicles and not great place for people to inhabit.

You would have thought that risk averse property investment funds would attach enhanced value to lower risk, more sustainable buildings, however to date this has not been the case.  Similarly, occupiers must demand buildings that can demonstrate that they have been conceived specifically to enhance occupant performance.  Finally, developers must select design teams who can demonstrate that they approach their work from a “user centred” philosophical perspective. 

Sustainable Retail; The Customer is King!

Sanisburys Greenwich the first  
BREEAM Excellent Supermarket

It has been over twelve years since the first sustainable retail building was opened by Sainsbury's on the Greenwich Peninsula.  So you would imagine that the knowledge base has developed significantly over this period and that we are now producing much better more holistic solutions right?  Well, unfortunately I am not sure that this is the case!  You  see, the problem I would argue, is that we have fairly spectacularly missed the point when it come to designing sustainable buildings for the retail sector.  Rather than starting with the needs, wants and desires of the customer almost all of the developments have focused on energy efficiency to the virtual exclusion of anything else.



Borough covered market
is flooded with natural light



So why, if the retailers mantra is "the customer is king" has this not been the starting point for redesigning the buildings that we would like them to use, enjoy and want to come back to?  I believe that this is caused by a fundamental disconnect between the shop keepers and the teams that deliver their buildings.  Rather than understanding what the client really needs to drive sales, the process has been dumbed down to a repeater process that reduces risk but ultimately delivers an end result that is far from the optimum.

Natural lighting at
the Burlington Arcade

A good illustration of this point is the reintroduction of daylight into the sales floor.  At Greenwich we used a north light roof that not only provides light but also reconnected the interior of the store with the wider environment; creating a more comfortable, less claustrophobic environment, conceived to encourage customers to dwell longer and spend more.  Subsequent buildings have used light pipes to deliver the daylight, but with none of the other customer benefits.



Customer Centered Design



Customer centered retail design should offer the most comfort benefits to the customer using the least energy and materials necessary to satisfy their needs.  This would mean that all stores would be heated and if really necessary, cooled using underfloor systems, rather than blowing warm and cool air down into the occupied zone, because humans experience discomfort when heated from above.  This arrangement has the associated benefit that only the volume of the store nearest the floor that customers inhabit is conditioned.  Temperatures above the first two metres can be allowed to fluctuate more widely since nobody experiences them.



B&Q New Malden
 North light roof



Providing appropriate fresh air is also an important factor in creating a well tempered customer environment.  It is important that fresh air is delivered directly to the place where customers are, near the floor, rather than blowing it down onto them from above.  The reason for this is simple, all of the warm, moist, stale air that we exhale floats up and settles in a soggy, smelly layer against the ceiling.  When fresh air is blown down from above it has to pass through this layer where it enevitably mixes, resulting in a mixture of fresh and stale air being delivered!  Many high quality office environments use displacement ventilation delivered through grills in the floor and similar systems have been trialled in retail environments but have not yet been widely adopted.



Customers visiting
IKEA Southampton



Customers love natually lit retail environments; think of covered markets and arcades and you conjure up a picture of fresh abundant produce and upmarket boutique shops with beautifully lit produce.  So why is it that black box stores with little or no natural light has become the norm?  The argument made is that natural light is hard to control and can wash out display lighting.  Amazingly, galleries manage to light priceless works of art this way, we just need to try a little harder.  One of the other challenges that natural lighting poses is that the windows in the roof need to face north if overheating is to be avoided.  Sites do not always make it easy to orientate the roof in the correct direction and this has led to the increasing use of lightpipes as they do not require specific orientation.  This is in my opinion an over reaction and we need to develop innovative solutions to overcome what are realitively easy problems to solve.

Once we have created the optimum internal environment for our customers it is important that energy losses through the envelope are kept to an absolute minimum.  It really suprises me that buildings are still being built to Building Regulations minimum standards.  Insulation is relatively cheap and is much easier to install during construction than at some point during the life of the building.  I can see no reason why you would not install the maximum amount of insulation to futureproof the finished building, aiming to achieve a u value of between 0.1 to 0.15 W/m²K and carefully detail the junctions to ensure infiltration rates are less than 0.15 m³/( m².hr) @50Pa.

Simple lightweight timber frame

Operation V Embodied Energy

As buildings are designed to be more energy efficient the balance between operational energy and embodied energy shifts, placing more emphasis on the energy that is embodied in the materials used to construct the buildings.  This has led to a move away from steel and concrete to wood alternatives.  While this is to be encouraged, because timber locks in carbon, we do not currently grow enough of the stuff to satisfy demand.  A number of projects are making big sustainability claims based on the fact that they use a lot of wood and therefore sequester large amounts of carbon.  If you are building in Scandinavia where wood is plentiful this is not such an issue, however in Britian we do not produce much and it will be difficult to significantly increase production.  I believe that we should be designing hi tech timber structures that use our precious locally grown timber as efficiently as possible.  Through careful design and specification this approach will encourage investment in UK forestery and help to develop the UK timber industry.

Made in Britian

I believe that the continuing concern regarding the state of the UK economy, coupled with growing emphasis on the carbon footprint of the materials, will see a drive towards the use of more locally produced building materials.  This is likely to result in buildings specifically designed to be “Made in Britian” using local materials and components to reduce their total embodied carbon, create jobs and help to grow the UK’s building products industries.

Neptune Point Harrow
retail led mixed use development

Retail led Mixed Use Development

To support our ailing High Streets it is essential that new development is sensitively located to provide retail anchors that will attract customers to these under pressure locations and encourage linked shopping trips.  I believe that all new retail development should be designed to make the most of valuable urban land and to do this, high density mixed use schemes will become the norm.  This will not only ensure economic sustainability by incorporating residential uses above retail, it will help to increase the number of residents in the area who will patronise not only the stores that they live above, but also their adjoining local High Street.



Waitrose cookery school may
evolve into an in store concept



Experiential Retailing

The trend for creating more experiential retail environments has been developing for over a decade now, but has yet to really influence the design of most stores.  But, with the rapid growth in online retail and the inevitable impact that it is having on physical store takings there is a growing need for stores to offer more than simply selling products if they are to arrest the growth in virtual shopping.  I believe that we will see more retail stores incorporating environments where customers can actually try out products and learn new skills.  Imagine the Jamie Oliver healthy eating academy, attached to your local store, teaching customers how to cook and eat more healthy food.  At your local B&Q store you will be able to try new tools before you buy, learn skills from local tradesmen and even take a taster course run by the local further eduction college before signing up for full time study.  Incorporating educational facilities within retail environment will provide tangible benefits to the local communities that they serve and for early adoptors will dramatically change customer perception of their brands.



A New Sustainable Retail Architecture

It is now over a decade since Sainsbury’s at Greenwich, the worlds first sustainable retail building opened and it is, in my biased opinion, still yet to be supassed.  In these recessionary times it is essential that the sustainable stores of the future must utilise customer focused design to deliver enduring value by making customers feel comfortable, relaxed and more likely to stay and spend.  Every material and component must be selected to provide optimum performance with the minimum carbon footprint and material miles.  Social sustainability will I believe be of increasing importance and will result in new and innovative uses being incorporated into stores, providing customers and their families with education and training opportunities.  All of the social and economic benefits must be achieved with either neutral or ideally beneficial impacts upon the environment.  I am firmly of the opinion that holistic sustainability will be the key driver that will drive innovation and this will revolutionise store architecture.