Please don't scrap BREEAM Mr Gove!

It has been suggested that the Goverment is about to sign off the scrapping of BREEAM as a requirement for school design following Sebastian James' singling it out as part of 'the excessive burden of regulation'. While not being perfect, BREEAM has achieved some major changes to our industry and it seems reckless to chuck it out without reallocating the best bits into the Building Regs and Planning. UKGBC and the Aldersagate Group have written an excellent letter which was reported in Building's Breaking News on Tuesday
http://www.building.co.uk/5030948.article?origin=bldgbreakingnewsletter.

So yesterday I wrote to Secretary of State Gove on behalf of the former Zero Carbon Task Force:

"I write as the Chairman of the former Zero Carbon Schools Task Force (2009-10) to express my concern that you may be considering the dropping of the BREEAM metric. My understanding is that, far from being a major burden, the construction industry has responded pretty well to this challenge, as it usually does, and that BREEAM Excellent has delivered significant carbon savings at next to no cost (+ 0.7%).

The industry needs certainty of work flow and the progressive raising of standards to a timetable so that it can prepare and not waste money gearing up for a phantom. The overall task of saving 34% of UK emissions by 2030 en route for 80% reduction by 2050 is a difficult challenge and schools have a key role to play both in the actual reduction of emissions and in the behaviour change of tomorrow’s citizens, whose futures we can so easily jeopardise.

Few would defend the last letter of BREEAM and some of the items have passed or can readily and more properly pass into the Building Regulations and the Planning process; BRE could certainly feed back much more to the industry. The Department has a long tradition of research and learning from what has and has not been achieved in school design. So I hope I am mistaken in being led to understand that your Department is preventing Partnerships for Schools from publishing the excellent Post-Occupancy Evaluation work that they have done. At a time of major change as the industry strives to mitigate the effects of the changing climate, we desperately need this feedback in order to do for less and to build more resilient schools.

So please do not abandon BREEAM until there has been a full review of its impact and the key elements relocated, as is being done with the Code for Sustainable Homes at CLG. And on behalf of the Zero Carbon Task Force, I would be grateful if you could re-convene a meeting of the TF so we can explain to you and your officials how Energy and Carbon Savings can be made at little or no additional cost to prepare your estate for a more sustainable future."

Demolition or Refurbishment

On Monday evening Prof. Anne Power from LSE gave a thought provoking presentation at the Institute of Civil Engineers. She began by tackling the governments notion of a housing shortage in the UK. We currently have 25million homes (17million 3bed+). Also called into question was the idea that we reuse plastic bags but not a house!

She weighed up the argument for demolition or refurbishment in terms of

1. Economic cost

2. Environmental cost

3. Social Cost

She questioned some of common misconceptions in the refurbishment debate and spoke at length about the green deal.

For an hours watching well spent click on the link below for a recording of the lecture.

https://ice.adobeconnect.com/_a884535394/p36vt59xnyr/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal (some compatibility issues for windows 7 users)

The Social Life of Small Spaces

Last night I took advantage of a free showing of W H Whyte's excellent film, "The Social Life of Small Spaces" (courtesy of The Urban Design Group) . Having previously seen some clips c/o Miriam Fitzpatrick who gave a talk in our practice about Whyte last year, I was keen to see more. Though old (1969) his observations are hardly dated and led to a simple set of design codes (seven or so in total) for New York, which were subsequently adopted by the city planners.

The film is made up of many observations of behaviour between people and each other and between people and spaces. In a simple, soporific and amusing way, Whyte's dry voiceover points out what should be obvious: that "People sit where there are places to sit" and that "People like to watch other people." However, the manner by which these needs are met through good design of public space is not so obvious , making this film a must-see for architects, urban designers and difficult-to-persuade clients alike. [Available to watch in full here.]

The Big Rethink

First up on Christmas morning, I opened up the Dec/Jan issue of Architectural Review for the first time for a while; by the end of the Editorial I realised that 'The Big Rethink: Towards a Complete Architecture' was my secret Santa. The editor writes "Over the next 12 months, the AR will publish essays on various topics of critical concern with the aim of stimulating new thinking and debate. No other architectural publication is attempting anything similar (too right!). To open the pages of our competitors is to get no sense that this is a pivotal moment for architecture and architects."http://www.architectural-review.com/essays/the-big-rethink-towards-a-complete-architecture/8624049.article

What is all this about then? Well, Climate Change. The first Big Rethink essay by Peter Buchanan explores what many of us have been thinking for a while, that, however brilliant the techniques, much 'starchitecture' has lost touch with the real world and certainly with the urgent obligations of mitigating the effects of climate change. (Is there a parallel with the Bankers, who are so busy in their own self-fulfilling bubble that they dont understand how the rest of us see them?).

He starts with the proposition that modern architecture could be said to be have at last reached full maturity and identifies three practices "whose buildings display an admirable breadth of design concerns , responding to history and context, and are aptly inventive (without being contrived) formally and technically,as well as in social organisation and environmental strategies." He goes on to suggest that two of them" Hopkins and Cullinan are among the world leaders in green design."

Many thanks Peter and I look forward to the following articles with interest.