Architecture by Bike - Lumen Church

Cullinans' Design Management Team - Team 1 - continued their series of "Architecture by Bike" visits with a lunchtime trip to Theis & Khan's Lumen Church and community centre in Bloomsbury on Monday 28th March.
We found the simplicity and clarity of detailing well suited to the calmness and legibility of function that the cleverly planned series of spaces demand. Spaces within spaces have made for a much more valuable community facility than a simple place of worship could have provided. A prayer / meditation "cone" separates the excellent cafe from the chapel whilst a separate atrium route allows the community to use the garden and meeting spaces at the rear, without interrupting services.
Ubiquitous rooflights ensure that daylight is used to good effect in all rooms, whilst a huge, triple-height window onto Tavistock Place ensures that passers by are welcomed in. The busyness of the cafe despite the church's position away from the main thoroughfares of Judd Street and Gray's Inn Road is evidence of the success of the project. Good food too!

Space or water - a lifestyle choice?

Great talk by Francesca Greco here last night on water and its place in our economy. Enjoyed the conversation afterwards with Mark Bradbury about lifestyle and use of water. Where does the obsession with washing all the time come from? Why we were brought up with baths once a week and now are designing 65m2 flats with two bathrooms? Surely some want more space instead of ensuites?

Government u-turn on zero carbon homes

“The commitment to Zero Carbon remains in place - there's no ambiguity about that...we can now say that zero carbon homes by 2016 is not just an abstract theoretical goal, but that new homes really will be zero net contributors to C02 in reality too.”

Housing Minister Grant Shapps (Feb 1 2011)

Today's budget saw the self-declared "greenest government ever" scrap their commitment to zero carbon homes. This is yet another sorry erosion in the push for a more sustainable future. The government is striving for economic growth yet this back tracking has dealt a severe blow to one of the countries biggest growth sectors. Mr. Osborne need only look at this year’s ecobuild to see how the innovation of home grown companies has lead to such advances and subsequent growth of this market.

This U-turn was glossed over by the formation of the green investment bank and an a injection of £3 billion into risky green projects. This money is welcome but it is not on a par with the whole scale level of change required to cut our addiction to carbon which 'zero carbon homes' promised.

To find out more see the UK's Green Building Council's excellent blog entry.

Collaborative working in Berlin

Just returned from 'Betahaus' in Berlin; a former office block that has been converted into co-working space for creative professionals. Berliners can pay a standard daily, weekly or annual rate to hire a desk space. For a small top-up fee they have access to a range of additional facilities including a workshop (laser-cutter, 3-d modelling etc.), meeting rooms and a constant supply of coffee from the ground floor cafe. Putting artists, architects, web designers and journalists together in one space makes for a chaotic and creative environment where ideas can easily be shared.....

Gridshell Workshop at Sheffield Hallam University

Sheffield Hallam University held a week long programme of events on the design of shell structures which included lectures from Prof. John Chilton on the work of Heinz Isler, Prof Remo Pedreschi on the work of Eldio Dieste and John Romer from Cullinans on the making of theDownland Gridshell.

With the course leader Gabriel Tang, John worked with the architectural students in design workshops culminating in the construction of a full size gridshell structure in the University's grounds.

Sustainable Development Foundation

We are delighted to welcome the Sustainable Development Foundation (SDF) to our offices in Islington and we look forward to their monthly guest blog spot which will come, in turn, from each one of the programmes they run (Good Homes Alliance, SHINE etc).

More about the SDF:

The aim of the SDF is to encourage a step-change, radical improvement in the performance of the UK's built environment, with our ultimate goal being healthy, environmentally sound and productive buildings that support sustainable lifestyles and communities.

The SDF delivers change through a series of learning networks, undertaking research and gathering evidence about leading-edge practices, providing education and training about their implementation, and then collaborating with leaders in each field to create exemplar projects, before finally measuring their actual performance and feeding this all back into the learning cycle again.

Our main programmes are focussed around groups of leading clients, with other members of the supply chain providing additional knowledge and support. Programmes include:

• the Good Homes Alliance - a gathering of leading-edge private and public sector housing developers and others (including Culllinans)
• SHINE - a learning network for sustainable healthcare estates
• LoCO2CO - looking beyond individual buildings to low carbon communities
• the Passivhaus Trust - a member-led organisation that promotes the Passivhaus standard in the UK.

For more information on the SDF, please contact: info@sdfoundation.org.uk

Team Build 2010

Last weekend, the finals of the annual Teambuild UK event took place at Eynsham Hall, in Oxfordshire, and ECA employees Scott and Brendan were both part of finalist teams, in collaboration with, among others, our friends at Expedition, Arup, WSP & Grimshaws

Teambuild sees young construction industry professionals form multi-disciplinary teams and pitch to be involved in a major construction project. The winners are invited to Eynsham Hall to present their masterplans, and then take part in several design and contract related tasks to decide on a winner. This year, tasks were centred around the Nirah development, who very kindly allowed competitors to remasterplan part of their site.

It was a fast paced weekend, both around the work tables as teams worked against the clock to complete tasks, and in Eynsham Hall's award winning bar late into the night.

We are proud to announce that one of the ECA teams was selected to win the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects's procurement prize for best performance in the procurement task.

(Images courtesy of Teambuild UK)

Brendan's team presenting their construction task

Brendan's team collecting their certificates

Scott presenting his team's masterplan

Scott's team receiving their procurement prize