'The Icing on the Cake'

A cake, made by members of the office, celebrates the completion of the BFI Master Film Store in the New Year.

What has George Osborne done to the Construction Industry now?

The inter-disciplinary membership of the Edge (think-tank) http://www.edgedebate.com regularly debate current issues of substance, including the failure of our construction industry to fully embrace the opportunities offered by and our responsbilities arising from Climate Change. So agreeing a letter to send to the Chancellor of the Exchequer about his recent disastrous back-sliding was going to be hard work; coordinated by Simon Foxell, the letter was sent to Osborne on 9th Dec and the FT. President of CIBSE Andy Ford then suggested he and other Presidents should sign it and an abbreviated letter was circulated more widely.

The Daily Telegraph published it yesterday (15th Dec) signed by me as Convenor of the Edge and Presidents Andy Ford (CIBSE), Angela Brady (RIBA) and Prof. Roger Plank (IStructE) on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/8956670/Raising-the-price-of-alcohol-will-not-tackle-the-culture-of-binge-drinking.html - please scroll down to the end of the letters to find it.


Hattie Hartmann later covered it in the AJ in her review of 2011 http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/8623845.article for subscribers and today Building wrote it up on http://www.building.co.uk/5029337.article?origin=bldgweeklynewsletter

The next question is how to build on this in support of the sterling efforts of Government Chief Construction Adviser Paul Morrell at BIS and the Green Construction Board, on which Edge members Lynne Sullivan and Sunand Prasad sit. Why not ask the President of your institution what they are doing to change the views of the Treasury as green construction is an essential part of the economic recovery we all need.

Coming soon to a cinema near you (fingers crossed)

Last Thursday the All Parliamentary Party Climate Change Group in conjunction with the German Embassy screened “The 4th Revolution: Energy Autonomy” by Carl-A. Fletcher. The film presents a vision of a world powered entirely by renewable energy, accessible to everyone irrespective of geographic location or wealth. This is done by introducing the viewer to exemplar projects across the planet alongside listening to prominent players in the energy market.

Fletcher’s movie is thought provoking and leaves us asking why are we not striving for this wholly achievable future in the UK. That was certainly the question on many people’s lips at the closing Q&A session. Most were stunned by the impassioned words of Prof. Dr. Olav Hohmeyer as he presented Germans newly comissioned report for 100% renewable by 2050. If the Germans can do it without pandering to the persuasive nuclear lobby groups, then why shouldn’t we.



For the SRU 100% renewable report please follow the link below

http://www.umweltrat.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/02_Special_Reports/2011_10_Special_Report_Pathways_renewables.html

Are big businesses getting it?

After years of wondering what we have to do to encourage our clients and big business generally to start investing to save carbon, energy and money, I was really heartened by a presentation this week by Nigel Graham of Whitbreads; I was sharing a platform with him at a Construction Products Association http://www.constructionproducts.org.uk/ networking event at BIS. Whitbread no longer make beer but are expanding their hotel chain (Premier Inn), their coffee bars (Costa) and other brands.

Nigel explained that they had been driven to invest by the rising cost of energy, landfill and the Carbon Reduction Commitment. Following footprinting work, they invested £3m in LEDs and were delighted that it paid for itself in 18 months - easy! They then footprinted a hotel bed and discovered that 87% of the carbon was in the materials and 57% of that was in the cotton sheet; so now they are tying to reduce their dependency, especially as the price of cotton has tripled in the last three years.

In the same session Rob Lambe of Willmott Dixon explained how WDC were aiming for zero waste from sites and carbon neutrality by 2012! He very rightly complained that the Treasury Green Book promoted While Life Value but that no one in the public sector does it!

There is no doubt that the Treasury is the biggest block to carbon and energy reduction, surrounded as they are by big capital and the utility companies; we must all take every opportunity to talk about this to politicians, to the press and to our public sector clients and act in a politically relevant way.

The Green Economy

I was pleasantly surprised by the feisty performance put up by Tory Minister Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State at Defra, at the Aldersgate group meeting on Thursday; when challenged as to 'what can we do about George (Osborne)?' she replied that 'he had stumped up not £1bn, not £2bn but £3bn for the Green Investment Bank'. Not that the audience was impressed as the Aldersgate Group has been campaigning long and hard for the GIB's right to borrow, which George continues to deny.

Aldersgate Chairman Peter Young finished the evening with 6 points from the Group's Growth Statement that the Green economy will drive jobs and investment (my abbreviated notes):
1. Ensure Entreprise Zones are driving green growth
2. Set a clear rationale for meeting targets for environmental taxes
3. Ensure the Green Investment Bank can borrow from capital markets
4. Work with business to address green skills gap
5. Streamline the climate change and energy policy landscape to encourage investment in energy efficiency
6. Enhance the role of public procurement and increase support for research and demonstration.

Ideas First - and a talk on our work in Libya 2008-11

Yesterday's news was an important tipping point for the new government in ending the job of war and beginning the perhaps more difficult job of future building. It will also give confidence to the Libyan people to disarm and return to work, and with leadership and security comes stability and growth.

However this is also a dangerous moment for Libya's future. An emerging government with so much to do so quickly may find the pressure of big business at the gates very hard to resist. But resist they must for there is too much at stake in Libya - archaeology, biodiversity, wild landscapes and coastlines, social needs and fragile micro-economies - to let a period of unmanaged growth compromise the promise of a new future for the deserving Libyan people.

Nowhere is there more need to plan carefully for sensitive growth than in the Green Mountain, east of Benghazi, where we spent almost three years working (and at times, living) alongside our Libyan friends and partners, helping to write a plan for the region's future. Our Shahat Garden City project was a worked example of many of our ideas for new economies, renewable energy, valued public spaces and low energy housing, offering both privacy with density. All this took care to demonstrate the value of archaeology, farming, biodiversity and climate as treasured parts of the region's natural but so often forgotten assets.

Without leaders who know the value of the work that has already been done towards Libya's sustainable future, and who have the courage to manage development until approved strategies are in place, the moment may pass with an opportunity missed.

The next phase should be about ideas not contracts.

[Goodenough College, (London, WC1N 2AB) will be hosting an evening talk on our work in Libya 2008-11 on Monday 24 October at 8pm, titled: "Libya's 'Foreign' Cities: how lessons from the ancient world, fascism and the sustainability agenda could inform an appropriate Libyan urbanism after Gadaffi."]

Future Healthcare

Cullinan's Team Community Health attended a keynote speech by the former Secretary of State for Health Alan Milburn at the opening of the Future Health & Care Expo this week.

Milburn is an engaging speaker and he persuasively outlined five major challenges facing the NHS today:

1. Demography: How do we care for an ageing population?


2. Malady: Chronic, not infectious, disease is increasingly prevalent, which requires a movement from a focus on treatment to a focus on preventative action.


3. Citizen Centred: There is a need for more treatment in the community lessening the demand placed on hospitals.


4. Higher Expectations: Patients are more informed than ever with greater demands for quality of treatment and use of technology.


5. Money: Spending will need to decrease. A higher proportion of funding will go towards primary care with less spent on hospitals.

These concerns brought to mind our own Lambeth Community Care Centre which is a pioneering intermediate health facility that bridges the gap between GP surgeries and hospitals at the heart of the Lambeth Community. Perhaps something akin to this typology needs to be revisited by health practitioners to meet future health needs in this country? For more on this and our other healthcare projects see here.

Catmose Academy

I was invited by Jonathan Ellis Miller to visit Catmose Academy in Oakham; 12 of us showed up on a glorious September morning to be inspired by the Head and the architecture; I just sent him my thoughts:

As we arrived, the sun was shining and the building glowed elegantly in its stripped down palate of materials and crisp detailing. The Ellis-Miller plan revealed itself as being descended from Hunstanton and this has proved a real bonus. The Head arrived after Stage C and worked with the inherited ideas to develop it into an exemplary school; all too often the new Head arrives to fight the building, designed inflexibily for the previous incumbent.

But then the Head is truly inspirational and the children of Oakham are very lucky. His introduction and tour took me back to my student days when we designed an educational system for Milton Keynes then nearing the end of its masterplanning. I had been inspired by the teacher tutor Mike Armstrong who then went on to put team-teaching and many other innovative ideas into practice at Countesthorpe School In Leicester. No bells because its quicker; no rules but loads of responsibilities, good food and wonderful workshops and a Hellerup Stair that really works.

The plan is rightly on an East/West axis with a significant number of classrooms and workshops facing North; naturally that means there are some South-facing classrooms but fortunately no East or West-facing ones. The sun-shading looked a little too neat and tidy from outside and indeed South-facing Shakespeare, the double classroom for English, was pretty hot when we visited but it is a minor quibble and should be easily sorted with the sensible natural ventilation strategy.

Well done all!

Teaching in Santiago, Chile

Our former partner Chris Whitman invited me to speak on Sustainable Architecture at a Conference at the Universidad Central where he teaches in the Laboratorio Bioclimatico - four big lectures in two days! I have just sent him my reflections on the trip:

Having not been to Santiago for twelve years, I got really excited as we flew in over the snow-clad Andes without a cloud in the sky. The journey from the airport was uneventful but three major changes became apparent; new housing developments were creeping higher up the foothills; then the Costanera Centre tower broke through the smog and appeared behind the Cerro San Cristobal and then the fast-flowing concrete road tunnel under the Rio Mapoccho, each change provoking the question 'but why?'

The success of Santiago as a World City is undoubted but tall buildings, many fully glazed, are built without any concern with orientation or the energy they will consume or the parking that they generate. Although the metro is as popular as the new bus system seems unpopular, Santiago is a car-city and Chile a car-country, the downside of which is the smog over Santiago and the dependency on importing the ever-diminishing quantities of oil.

I remember from way back in 1973 how the centre of Santiago and many of the neighbourhoods were eminently walkable but not now. I set off like a good European to walk around the downtown; it felt familiar but then I walked up Calle San Antonio and was shocked to find myself in a street of multi-storey garages; where had the city gone to? And where were the cyclists? In comparison London is relatively hilly and admittedly slightly more temperate but I cycle on average 10 kilometres a day to go to work, for speed between meetings and for some modest exercise that's free; cycling is growing in London very rapidly but your streets are better suited.

It was great to see old friends and make new ones; the students at the Laboratorio Bioclimatico at the Universidad Central were delightful and really interested in the very different focus that many UK architects have now. We are in a major recession but low carbon construction (ie buildings with Low and Zero Carbon Emissions) is seen across Government to be a major part of the economic recovery plan for England. As a country we have a legal obligation to reduce our carbon emissions by 34% by 2030 and 80% by 2050 and that's seriously difficult but with buildings being 40% of the problem this is a great opportunity for architects and engineers working together.

When I visited Santiago in 1999, I was shocked to find so many office towers, fully glazed and un-shaded, especially to the north, with the honourable exception of the exemplary Edificio Consorcio. This time I was more shocked to find that there had been no change to the office buildings and then the Pacific coast was being re-clad with fully glazed West-facing apartments, all of which must overheat unless air-conditioned.

But I was even more shocked when we drove up the coast past the new coal-powered power stations in the already badly polluted Las Ventanas. I think of air-conditioning and C02 as waste or if you prefer it, bad design. Beautiful generous Chile may be losing some of its hydro-powered electricity but it has an almost perfect geography for low energy living. The cities are well dispersed and surely each could become self-sufficient in power, if you were to harness the boundless carbon-free wind, sun, wave and geo-thermal energy with good opportunities for solar powered distilled water as well. This would be better still if the utilities for each town were owned by the citizens of that city. I can see no need for a national grid and the perfect shape for high-speed trains to connect the very north to the very south.

I love visiting Chile and this time I enjoyed the ambitious Parque Chagual, the impressive Parque Nacional Las Chinchillas and best of all riding into the wooded hills at Zapallar. I like teaching low energy design and realising that we have so much to teach as well as a lot to learn. I hope that next time I will begin to see the architects taking their global carbon duties and opportunities more seriously and designing excellent new buildings while dramatically reducing the carbon footprints of the existing buildings that are going to be with us for a long time.

Ted's Talk at the RIBA North East

On Thursday night Ted Cullinan gave a talk to the RIBA North East on his design for the new Maggie’s Centre in Newcastle. He used his trademark style of drawing as he talked to demonstrate ideas and referenced previous projects to explain the scheme.

Ted started by looking at the landscape work of Maggie Keswick Jencks herself before describing the location and approach to the Maggie’s Centre at the Freeman Hospital, drawing in reference to the settings of Fountains Abbey Visitor Centre and Archaeolink.

Fountains Abbey Visitor Centre

Archaeolink Visitor Centre

He then drew the layout in greater detail, emphasising the key connection between the building and its surrounding courtyard landscape and roof garden. Ted showed how this had been achieved at the John Hope Gateway at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. The Law House, Ready Mixed Concrete offices roof garden, Centre for Mathematical Sciences and his own house in Camden Mews were shown to demonstrate how accessible roof gardens can be used.

John Hope Gateway, RBGE

The Law House

Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge

RMC HQ

Camden Mews

The Maggie’s Centre is due on site in the next few months. We would like to say thanks to the RIBA NE Young Persons Forum for organising the event and for their fundraising towards the Maggie’s Centre.

Model of the North East Maggie's Centre

Maggie's London Night Hike

A team from Edward Cullinan Architects are walking the Maggie's London Night Hike tomorrow night.

Last year we wore glow-in-the-dark glasses. This year we will be wearing glow-in-the-dark baseball caps.

 If you would like to sponsor us, you can do so here: www.justgiving.com/sole-ii-solar

This event is particularly significant for us as the North East Maggie's Centre, designed by Ted Cullinan, will be going on site this year. We are honored to be working on a new Maggie's centre and are all proud to be supporting such a great cause. Maggie's Centres are for anyone affected by cancer, including family and friends of the person who has been diagnosed. Providing the right environment for visitors to a Maggie's Centre is crucial as it allows people to feel supported and uplifted. The North East centre will provide a place of calm and care. Particular to this centre is a sheltered sunken court on its south sides and a large south-facing sloping roof over the library that has photovoltaic cells to make electricity.

Our team name is 'Sole II Solar'; sole as in shoe, II as in second year in a row, and solar inspired by the sun image drawn by Ted (shown in the section above) as our emblem. He drew this to demonstrate the solar design principles used in the design of Maggie's North East.

Loddon lessons

At the weekend I made a long-intended detour to Loddon in Norfolk where Tayler and Green built hundreds of sympathetically designed council houses in the 1940s-70s, some now listed. John Seymour in his 1970 Companion Guide to East Anglia writes 'these architects have managed to design homes that blend in beautifully with their surroundings, which continue in the tradition of East Anglia without slavishing aping the past, which do not strive ridiculously into a space-age future, which have unity and yet diversity, which in every case are pleasing to the eye, and which are said by the inmates to be pleasant to live in. ... Every architect in the country should be made to go and look at them.' Being half aware of them, I was expecting a couple of clusters but a large proportion of the small town is from the same hands. There is none of the pretentiousness of the likes of Poundbury or the laboured variety of Harlow's New Hall: the strengths are in the pure pleasure of making decorative design with the process of building - patterned brickwork to otherwise blank gables, little roofs to the chimneys, simple elaboration of barge boards. A thoughtful eye too for devices to enable home-making, such as sheltered set backs by entrances with surface to sit on or put plants. This is top-end 'people's detailing' : 'every house has a porch' but these are delicately designed porches and not all the same. There is a debt to Asplund as well as the local Norfolk vernacular, sweet and pleasant rather than hard and raw. The layouts are hardly radical in terms of relation to fronts, backs, roads and gardens but the use of wide-fronted terraces was unconventional then and still relevant now for making a very liveable environment.

Definitely worth a detour.

Arts and Crafts modern

Traditional natural building materials such as timber, cob, thatch had to be used in a way that recognised their limited durability. Steep roof pitches, generous overhangs result. If these rules were not followed they would have fallen apart quickly. Well detailed, they age gracefully and delight with their marks of age.

Fed up with constant repairs - in particular reputtying and painting timber windows at the beach shack - has made me think about how to detail contemporary building in a traditional way.

The existing porch was detailed to invite water into it, in particular a window sill sloping backwards. After twenty years it was oozing decay.

We rebuilt it in a week this summer using decay resistant but economical details. Sawn fence posts are directly glazed with 4mm sheets of toughened glass. I love that ambiguity of the frameless window - the magic of the invisible cloak. The sheets drain over a simple aluminium flashing over open jointed Douglas Fir cladding, all detailed to keep everything beyond the air barrier nice and well ventilated. The roof overhangs and protects the wall - no gutter needed here so we could make an exceptionally thin edge for a built up felt roof. This is a detail 'under test', taking advantage of a self-adhesive felt system where a simple aluminium angle is primed, making the felt stick tenaciously to it. The test is to see how long this really does stick. In the meantime it is as razor sharp as any modernist could desire.

volunteering at Global Generation

On Wednesday, I enjoyed a morning stint for Global Generation to help prepare their 2nd portable allotment site (for growing herbs & veg in polytunnels) at Kings Cross Central. Argent, the developer, gives them temporary use of the land whilst awaiting its sale.

GG's previous 'Living Food' projects here were the Skip Garden at St Pancras Station and the Hoop Garden, the other allotment site which they will decant from.

The Guardian's IT department (from its Kings Place HQ across the road) was also there helping to spruce up a couple of used portakabins, furniture, etc. into classroom (for teaching related BTech courses to local kids) and meeting spaces (for local community or business use).

From this new garden, one can see the new University of the Arts London complex, which is ready next month - it is huge! How will the art students adapt to this new environment, i.e. considering the change from the 'edgy-ness' of Central St Martin's current location in Soho?

Michael Morpurgo at Rosendale School

Parents, staff and children of Rosendale Primary School were entertained by children's laureate Michael Morpurgo last Tuesday. He kindly accepted an offer to cut the ribbon on the school's new library, a red London bus. The bus arrived at the school last autumn and a team of volunteer parents, have worked hard to convert the interior of the bus into the school's library. Morpurgo certainly demonstrated why children love his stories so much as he relayed his experiences of growing up, learning to love reading as a teen, and traveling. His wit and humour kept the kids laughing and asking questions for a good 30 minutes before the ribbon cutting.

Edward Cullinan Architects are pleased to be working on the remodelling of four classrooms at Rosendale School over the summer holidays.

Sectional perspective of a proposed remodelled classroom with improved storage, learning space, natural lighting and ventilation.

Stonebridge Regeneration Celebration

On Saturday 23rd July, Roddy (+ family) and Amy from Cullinans attended the Stonebridge Regeneration Celebration. For the last 15 years there has been an extensive regeneration of the Stonebridge estate in North West London, which includes the Hillside Hub, completed in 2009. Hosted by Hyde Hillside and the residents of the estate, the celebrations began at the Hub with a carnival parade that made its way through the estate and ended at the Pavilion where a formal reception, games, stalls and performances celebrating the diverse community took place. Here are some photos:

 Preparations inside the Hillside Hub for the carnival parade.

 The carnival parade sets off...

 ...and dances its way through the Stonebridge estate

The carnival parade ended up at the Pavilion where games, stalls, performances and information about the regeneration of the estate could be found.

Penarth Heights coming home

On 14th July I went to the launch of the show home for the first phase of Penarth Heights, the 377 unit scheme we designed for Crest Nicholson which won the competition in 2005. On a glorious summer evening it was great to see our vision of streets and places taking cues from the adjacent town beginning to come to fruition, and to share that celebration with those who have been working for ten years to transform this area. The nearby terraces have benefited from an extensive urban renewal programme so the contrast between old and new is softened. The first sweeping crescent of 'Captains houses', their serrated roof profiles replacing the stark outlines of the demolished 1969 blocks, is looking great, both from across the bay and from the town. This project really exploits the strengths of a superb site, with its quiet location and astonishing 180deg views over the sparkling waters of Cardiff Bay, the city and the green horizons beyond.

a flying visit to Belfast

The 6-monthly Project Advisory Board for the multi-university EPSRC/E.ON-funded CALEBRE Project http://www.calebre.org.uk (Consumer-Appealing Low Energy technologies for Buildng REtrofitting) met at Ulster University last week. Having not been to the city for 8 years, I went a day early to re-explore the oh so friendly Belfast with oh so many cars and hardly a bike in this largely flat city.

I started by looking around Queens University which was en fete, it being graduation day in the sun; and then looked up Architecture Professor at Queens, Ruth Morrow. After a good discussion about architectural education she walked me down to O'Donnell Tuomey's beautifully detailed new Lyric Theatre overlooking the Lagan; it was really well built by Gilbert Ash who have nearly finished our sub-zero Master Film Store for the BFI.

Then I met up with John Cole, whose determination to get quality health buildings for Northern Ireland led him to devise what the RIBA later adopted as smart PFI. After supper he drove me to see Penoyre and Prasad's Knockbreda Health Centre; although it was gone 9pm by the time we got there, the Centre Manager welcomed us and showed us around with great enthusiasm - great atmosphere and brilliant views through the atrium back over the centre of Belfast.

The next morning I took the train to Ulster University's Jordanstown Campus, deserted for the summer vacation. The low ceilings and lack of views out made the seemingly endless internal street a daunting experience - not the vital social space that must have been envisioned. Out in the air again, there was the smart new Innovation Centre and the labs where the heat pump and other infernal machines were being tested.

CALEBRE is approaching its final year and so it was really good to see the very varied sub-projects beginnning to join together. The excellent monitoring being done at the Nottingham E.ON house is producing really good evidence of how we might live in lower energy homes, how difficult it is for the local construction industry to retrofit MVHR and much else besides. Then there is a fascinating piece of work identifying personae (how different people react to lower energy homes) and a sequencing tool to help people to decide in what order to retrofit aspects of their homes. I can't wait to introduce Vicky Haines to Russell Smith of Parity Projects, who has approached this problem the other way round. Of course there are other great parts to CALEBRE so watch this space.

Cyrene in BBC R4's "From Our Own Correspondent"

There was a good article on Saturday's From Our Own Correspondent (09/07/11) on BBC Radio 4 about our old stomping ground, Cyrene, in Libya's Jebel Akhdar or Geen Mountain region. Justin Marozzi had evidently called in on the ancient Hellenistic & Roman city ruins en route to Benghazi and met up with names known to us through our work there in 2009-2011.

In 2009, Cullinans prepared visitor strategies and masterplans proposals for four of eastern Libya's ancient city sites - Techira, Ptolemais, Apollonia and Cyrene - as part of the Green Mountain project with Ramboll UK. More recently, our masterplan for a new, carbon neutral city for 60,000 people - Shahat Garden City - just 7km south of Cyrene, would have introduced innovative, low enegry urban design solutions to the the region, helping to tackle the Jebal Akhdar's housing shortage as well as future energy needs.

Marozzi found the Cyrene site to be just as we knew it, only before February there was the odd international visitor or achaeologist to be found there: red earth, goats, wild flowers, increadible views north to the Mediterranean and an amazingly complete city in need of better care.

Who do you think you are

Over a hundred of us gathered in the heart of Penoyre and Prasad's cool naturally cross-ventilated deep plan office last evening to hear 4 excellent presentations - a real cornucopia followed by delicious carpaccio, gorgonzola, wine and conversation.

Richard Sennett kicked off with softly spoken and eloquent thoughts on the book he is currently writing; cities work when they operate with porous boundaries rather than impermeable barriers like that Israeli wall. Liminality is key but that was a new concept to me - "a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes" Wikipedia tells me. In discussion he posited that the sealed plate glass window was a challenge to the desired porosity denying aural and olfactory connection to the city, while pretending to be transparent ie a barrier to be banned. By contrast he described an exercise his LSE Cities Programme had done about how to put an Aids clinic into Bluewater Shopping Centre with housing in the car park - good thinking!

Brand Consultant Ralph Ardill explained how corporate branding had changed from the profligate '80s where you could sell pretty much anything with the right brand to today when social media expose fakes ("the inauthentic") pretty much instantly. He described his highly successful but accidental collaboration with an architect to devise thhe Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.

The beautifully poised choreographer Siobham (Sue) Davies spoke about place and 'body memories' over a mesmerising film of 4 dancers rotating around a centre point , twisting and interweaving. She invited everyone to visit her studio in Lambeth by Sarah Wigglesworth

Finally Vincent Lacovara of AOC and Croydon Planning Dept described his annual Open House guided walk around the Seven Hills of Croydon; that is a trip around and up to the roof of the seven car parks in central Croydon, each year the experience being different, enriching his understanding of the place.

All four set thoughts running but Sue and Vincent offered related insights as to how we come to understand our sense of place in the city. In discussion Sue began to open up the elephant in the room which was that the new media were yet further encouraging us to consume ever more - next time perhaps?

Heathcare in Bath

Together with other members of the EOA (Employee Ownership Association) ECA's Community Healthcare Team enjoyed a tour of CircleBath Hospital last week. As members of an architectural cooperative we were interested to see another cooperatively run company in action. Circle is co-founded, co-run and co-owned by clinicians. The consultants and healthcare professionals who work for the organisation own the facilities they work in and from what we were told and shown this seems to motivate and empower the staff to put patients first in everything that they do.

The project was designed by Foster and Partners and some of the ambitions of the building reminded us of our Maggie's Centre North East in Newcastle which is due to start on site later this year. Circle has a calm domestic feel with lots of natural light (even in the operating theatres), great views to open countryside and, in contrast to typical healthcare facilities, a palette of warm and textured materials. Institutional corridors and signage are avoided as much as possible, and many of the rooms are multi-use and can be allocated to staff as required. Interestingly, the hospitality side of things is run by a former hotel manager in tandem with a Michelin star chef. The food, rooms and views are so good that many patients literally don't want to leave.

sustainable housing update courtesy of NHBC conference

1. The coaltion want to reduce regulations but some anxieties/upcoming activities from CLG included:

• CLG (Building Regs) Minister Andrew Stunnell very exercised by compliance failure 
• Zero Carbon now means CSH 5 but 'Code 6 is not dead' 
• security 
• rainwater-harvesting 
• ecology 
• embodied carbon 
• ventilation and over-heating 
• health and lifetime homes 

Watch for the release of the National Planning Policy Framework proposals, soon

2. Some news form the Zero Carbon Hub included:

• Carbon compliance is a minimum standard of fabric and technologies but this is now based on emissions/m2 rather than percentage improvements - much better! But the variation in UK weather is a huge problem; SAP assumes we all live in Nottingham 
• Cyril Sweett have reported that the extra over cost of a Code 5 (ie new ZC) home will have come down to £10k by 2016.

3. BRE have studied Greenwatt Way in Slough and concluded, among other things, that MVHR can be problematic:

• the need for a better research into how MVHR works (or doesnt)
• need to insulate MVHR ductwork in cold roofs 
• watch out for noise from fans 
• it can cost £20 to change the filters 
• better not to put the MVHR in the attic for ease of maintenance access - think about putting it in a cupboard, although this can conflict with need for storage space; dont forget the condensate pipe
• try to minimise the duct runs and ensure the flexible ducting isnt kinked etc

4. Lessons from Joseph Rowntree Floundation's Elm Tree Mews in York included:

• Airtighness target was 3m3/m2 but it measured bewteen 6 and 9m3; luckily the ventilation had been designed thinking the target was 10! 
• Co-heating tests showed up massive fabric failure in part due to construction of presinsulated timber cassettes in a wet summer; wet warmcell insulation had to be replaced and there was much more timber in the cassettes than anticipated leading to U-value deteriorating from 0.18 to 0.3 
• locally sourced windows claimed a u-value of 1.5 but that was mid-point not overall as specified, so rated 2.0 overall 
• complex shapes and contextual arts and crafts detailing led to extensive cold bridging 
• solar thermal only worked in one home - problems included a nail through a pipe, kinked pipework and one with the flow and return fitted the wrong way round 
• tenants didn know how to use the winter gardens and used them for storage 
• each dwelling had 4 controllers - heat pump, space heaing, solar hot water and immersion heater! 

Let me know if you want to see the powerpoints.

Lambeth Community Care Centre Open Day

On Saturday 21st May a group from the office went to the Lambeth Community Care Centre annual garden open day, to see the building in action and to enjoy some tea and cake. It was great to see how this innovative centre has been used and the garden has matured, over 25 years on from when it was first opened.

Robin Nicholson, senior partner at Cullinans and the project architect of the Care Centre, took us on a tour of the building and its extensive gardens, pointing out his mature fig tree, laden with fruit, and stories behind many of the plants. The local community got a warm welcome from staff and volunteers and from the gardener Millie who was there encouraging everyone to buy plants to help fund the next year’s work in the garden.

For the opening by Charles and Diana on a cold winter afternoon in 1985, Ted took the newly wed Di around the ground floor to meet the patients and those involved in making the Centre happen. Meanwhile Robin introduced Charles to the design and construction teams in the upper conservatory including the foremen plumber and electrician, while their bosses were out in the rather chilly garden.  All the guests were invited to bring bulbs to plant in the garden.

The wonderful first senior nurse Sheila Woodward, now retired but devoted to the Centre, showed us around the 1st floor ward areas, pointing out various design features that made an impact in the lives of the patients. For example, Sheila told us how the clerestory windows bathed the wards in the dawn light, and helped patients connect with passing of time each day. Apparently dawn is one of the most common times for people to pass away, at the most peaceful time of the day.

The wards look out over the verdant garden, allowing patients to enjoy the greenery and wildlife from their beds. A terrace runs along the ward where patients can sit and double doors enable beds to be wheeled out onto the terrace from the wards if a patient wants to be outside.

Sheila had had the unenviable task of taking over the building from a passionately determined group of doctors, therapists, administrators and architects who had lived and breathed the design for 5 years and it had taken the founders 5 years before that to get the money.  The plan had been to make a model place where patients would be looked after by the Centre’s nurses and therapists and visited by their GP as though they were in their own home.  The story of the early years is beautifully recorded by Gillian Wilce in ‘A Place Like Home’.

After huge initial success, Sheila moved on and inevitably there were some changes but the Tomlinson report in 1992 thrust the Lambeth CCC right back on the agenda as a model for the future of Community healthcare in London.

The centre is based around an innovative approach to patient care, where patients have an active role in their own care and the running of the centre. It was very interesting to see these principles in practice, innovative in its time and still very much relevant to current healthcare projects such as our current Maggie’s Cancer care centre project in Newcastle, where visitors are encouraged to feel ownership of the building and enabled to help themselves to cups of tea and participate in the gardening.

North East Maggie's Cancer Caring Centre

A special issue of the Architects Journal was devoted to the building 16th Oct 1985.

From Arts and Crafts to DIY

‘Where does my baggage come from?’ was a talk Ted gave in 1986. It’s a good question to keep asking on our journey of practice. One - though not the only - source for our inspiration has been the Arts and Crafts movement. The ‘Father of Arts and Crafts Architecture’ was Philip Webb, who in 1859 designed the Red House with and for William Morris. Webb's view was that architecture is ‘a common tradition of honest building’, and that architecture must be ‘mastership in building-craft developed out of contact with needs and materials’. He wrote little himself but his theories were articulated in a series of articles in 1925 by his biographer, friend and disciple W.R.Lethaby in ‘Philip Webb and his Work’. Lethaby was himself an innovative if not prolific architect - his church at Brockhampton with its unique thatched mass concrete vault was certainly honest building from first principles.

These ideas seem so out of sync with current procurement, where in spite of much good talk of integrated teams, the pressures are often to separate design and construction. With modern construction seemingly trying its best to separate design from making – at the same time as accusing architects of being detached from the process of building – the relevance of remaining grounded in the process and pleasure of making has never been greater. We have a culture within our office of self-building and DIY and we try and share successes, advice and tools. So, rather than keep this within the office I thought I’d add a thread within our blog touching on DIY.

Tom Brooksbank recently lent me a copy he’d picked up of Nomadic Furniture, 1974, by Victor Papanek and James Hennessy – ‘how to build and where to buy lightweight furniture that fold, inflates, knocks down, stacks or is disposable and can be recycled’. You can just feel the wobbliness and rough edges in most of these designs, although I particularly like this space-saving drop down desk.

IKEA has adopted these principles and made them work on a global scale, at the same time internationalising a seemingly acceptable level of wobble.

Here’s a tip for self assembly that is not wobbly and can be used to make self-build furniture composed in our beloved post-Cubist manner using floating planes and disengaged elements. Cut 6mm threaded stud to suitable lengths. Cut a slot in one end wide enough to take a screw driver bit. Set up your pieces with spacers and cramp together - it’s a good idea to prefinish them. Drill an undersized hole of 5 or 5.5mm depending on the material and drive the stud in. Remove the spacers and hey presto!

Here are some bedside units I made 15 years ago using this technique:

…. and more recently a unit for my daughter using some offcuts of shuttering ply.

Mary Lou Arscott taught me this tip, using it for door handle details in our self-built cubicles in office. I copied it for handles on wardrobe doors that turn light softwood framing into a rigid beam. Global wobble? – no thanks!