Clever Energy: People Power

In May we hosted a talk - 'Clever Energy: People Power' - as part of Open-City's Green Sky Thinking Week 2014 - and filmed it too...

'Clever Energy: People Power' video

Speakers: Mark Hewitt of ICAX on inter-seasonal heat transfer, Rokiah Yaman of LEAP on developing micro-anaerobic digestion in central London, and Agamemnon Otero of Repowering London on creating community-owned local energy.

Happold Lecture Take 2

Friday saw Robin Nicholson reprise his CIC Ted Happold Medal Lecture for Cullinan Studio and guests during a wine and cheese evening at Cullinans' canal-side office. Speeding through the last 25 years of the construction industry, Robin's lecture hinged on his experience of various landmark construction industry reports, taskforces and forums.
 

Throughout the talk, a common theme picked out by Robin was an increasing change of bias evident in each report, shifting towards a focus on the client and end user. This goes hand-in-hand with the more socially-driven agenda that has emerged at the forefront of sustainable practice.

 

 

For Robin, the 1994 Latham Report ('Constructing the Team') signalled the first time members of the construction industry created a "public interest manifesto", rather than a self-serving industry report. Four years later, the "industry-shaking" Egan Report ('Rethinking Construction') championed the concept of demonstration projects in order to better assimilate lessons learnt throughout the construction process - another move in favour of client and user. As well as this, Robin described the Egan Report as a significant "early stumbling" into sustainability. How much these projects realistically impacted upon future good practice is up for debate, however they made clear the complexity of true change in the industry.

But Robin maintains the future should be bright. From the optimistic Paul Morrell notion that "design is free if there is a 10% building performance improvement", to the presence of think tanks such as EDGE which continue to debate industry progress and direction , to the smartening of practice through BIM, its clear that attitudes are evolving. Success and sustainability will lie in properly seeing concepts through in practice - in Robin's words "now we just need to do it!"



Further reading:

- The Carbon Tracker Initiative's report "Unburnable Carbon 2013" which few audience members had come across.

- Zero Carbon Britain 2013 report: Robin noted that the Zero Carbon Britain launch had a very poor representation from the construction industry.

- EDGE 2013 report

 

 

The Happold Lecture 2013

Last night, Robin Nicholson became the ninth recipient of the prestigious Happold Medal.

The Medal was awarded jointly by the Construction Industry Council (CIC) and the Happold Trust. Robin received the Medal after delivering the Happold Medal Lecture 2013, entitled 'Collective responsibility for a sustainable industry'.

The Happold Medal Lectures form an occasional series of groundbreaking lectures on a wide array of topics, with a focus on sustainable development. They are in memory of CIC's founding Chairman and visionary engineer, Sir Edmund (Ted) Happold.

The 2013 Medal was designed by Kenneth Grange.

Are international sporting events unsustainable?

Robin Nicholson writes for Building Magazine:

"Holding the 2022 World Cup in Qatar should make us question the carbon cost of sport.

The football season has begun again - although, being an Arsenal supporter, things didn't start well. While, as a season ticket holder, entering the lower tier of the stadium never fails to thrill, as an architect I love the way this 60,000-seater has been elegantly inserted into the tight Victorian urban fabric so it is almost invisible from the Holloway Road, with good public transport links. And it was built on time and on budget without any fuss.

Sustainability at Arsenal is more about finance and performance than carbon or energy and I don't lose much sleep about the relatively few fans who fly in from around the globe to watch the Gunners. But bells began to ring when FA chairman Greg Dyke recently challenged the viability of the summer 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Arup will have brought all their brilliance to bear on the design of the five air-conditioned stadiums planned to allow the players and fans some comfort when the local temperature in July can exceed 50 degrees centigrade. Money is clearly not a problem in Qatar but with up to 70% of all energy delivered to air-conditioned buildings being used to power the air-con, how sustainable can such stadiums be? And how will the spaces between the buildings work so spectators, with or without tickets, can mill around in what for many will be unaccustomed heat?

Buildings are only part of the carbon footprint - the spectators have to get there too. I love my sport as much as anyone but I have long wondered about the carbon cost of flying to international sporting events, as we will go to enormous lengths to see Usain Bolt run or our teams play abroad. Many flew into London for the Olympics but how many more will be flying to the next World Cup - 2014 in Brazil, 2018 in Russia and 2022 in wherever. Just what will the carbon price of the 2022 World Cup be if Greg Dyke doesn't persuade Fifa to move it to another country?"

Maggie's Opening

Maggie’s Newcastle opened on 16^th May 2013 on a wonderful sunny day which saw the building fully inhabited for the first time. The kitchen was packed to the concrete down stand beams, with project architect, project manager and lighting designer perched on the staircase and others spilling into the courtyard  for a view  of the speakers Charles Jencks, Sarah Brown,  Ted Cullinan and Lorna Moran and to listen to bassist Graeme Danby’s wooing of the crowd.

Working with Maggie’s to create the Maggie’s Newcastle has been a tremendous experience and a joy to work with such a committed client. In the month since the opening an unprecedented 1000 people have visited the centre, including a larger proportion of men than at other centres which was one of the key aspirations for this scheme.

The centre sits within a continuum of buildings by our office. The radical transformation of the hospital grounds into a tranquil courtyard exemplifies our interest in place making and the celebration of living close to nature. The centre is sited and arranged to maximise the sun’s winter heating potential, to collect and store its energy and regulate temperature with the mass of exposed concrete. The landscaped mounds provide shelter to the north and quietly delineate the warm courtyard to the south.

Most importantly, our buildings blossom through use and it was wonderful to see the varied spaces of Maggie’s Newcastle being activated for the first time.

 

Customer Appealing retrofit

Ecobuild this year was as overwhelming in ideas as in products with its excellent seminar series. In the 'Refurbishing Britain' theme, lessons from CALEBRE focused mainly on technical solutions. But as the CA in CALEBRE stands for 'Customer Appealing', Victoria Haines summary of findings on people's appetite for improving their homes was particularly interesting.

After all, if we could get our teenagers to turn down their heating and turn off their lights we would probably be closer to the 80% reduction needed than replacing our boilers with heat pumps.

This is in the wider context that energy efficiency as such is a low priority for most people: comfort yes, cost of fuel yes but reducing carbon emissions no. The evidence suggests that unless there is a simultaneous change in behaviour and attitude, homes refurbished as part of the Green Deal or otherwise will be more comfortable but not reduce emissions.

Barriers to retrofit include the comfortable relationship people have with their homes, particularly older 'hard to treat' properties.  Her evidence shows that most people make the major changes to their homes when they first move in, with a readiness to live with disruption then that they would not tolerate 20 years later.

With the scale of the refurbishment challenge needed we have focused on physical solutions - still with many questions over their effectiveness. Clearly they are important but are only a part of a more nuanced approach needed. 'Hard to treat' solid wall properties are a huge challenge to meeting our emissions reduction targets. Linking a reduction of Stamp Duty to undertaking major Green Deal work would be a neat way of both incentivising energy-saving refurbishment at a point that most suits people, as well as stimulating the housing market.

In the meantime, the bigger question remains - how do we change our behaviours to live within our means?

Healthy Retrofit

A good event on 'Healthy Retrofit' at Cullinan Studio's newly refurbished Foundry building on Wednesday last week, with retrofit challenges and achievements covered by Johnny Winter of Cullinan Studio, Neil May from ASBP and Richard Griffiths of Parity Projects.

The 'Healthy Retrofit' talk was hosted by Cullinan Studio in their new BREEAM 'Excellent' retofit offices.

Brendan Sexton of Cullinan Studio introducing the evening and our latest annual sustainability report.

Johnny Winter of Cullinan Studio began the evening with a talk on the retrofit of 

our Baldwin Terrace studios, including some of the lessons learnt from the process.

Neil May's talk on (a seemingly dry subject) -  'How sustainable products can assist with moisture control in retrofit' - was particularly timely.

Neil May of ASBP.

29% of UK housing stock is solid wall construction. As a nation we have to upgrade it successfully if we are to reduce our carbon emissions and provide comfortable homes that people can afford to heat.

Under the Green Deal, this widespread form of construction is labelled 'hard to treat'.

It's an odd situation to be in. At last, and for all the Green Deal's faults, something is being done to tackle the challenge of widescale retrofit of our existing housing. Now there is a growing pressure to get this work underway. But do we actually have the technical solutions?

The general 'golden rule' for the Green Deal is that the cost of carrying out improvement works is matched by savings in fuel bills. 'Hard to treat' properties can't meet this rule: the cost of insulating solid wall properties far exceeds the savings in fuel bills. To get this work done, additional subsidy is needed. This comes from the utility companies' 'Energy Company Obligation'. This subsidy is not given away but is paid for by a general increase in all our fuel bills. The utility companies are obliged to meet set carbon reduction targets, hence the pressure to get this work underway and fast.

Building Magazine on 8th February reported Encraft's recent study, which showed that the costs of the upgrading 'hard to treat' homes has been woefully underestimated.The effective cost per ton of carbon saved they estimate to be £180 compared with the government's £80, a difference we will all have to bear through increases to our fuel bills.

So it is more than ever important that the technical solutions employed do actually work.

Neil's overriding point was that we do not yet have robust, widely applicable, whole building solutions based on sound science: inappropriate and partial solutions seriously risk causing a new generation of moisture-related problems, from mould growth and ill-health, to fabric degradation and premature decay.

To meet this challenge we need the pace of research and dissemination to accelerate.

In the meantime, we need some good rules of thumb to guide us. In this debate the five 'principles for building' still stand up*. What are they? Two overriding constraints, two overarching objectives, and the fifth a guiding caution.

• 'High to low' restates what should be obvious, that gravity generally makes water flow downhill, that temperature goes from hot to cold, that vapour diffuses from high to low vapour pressure.
• 'Separate lives' reminds us that buildings are assembled in a process and that different materials move and decay at different rates, processes which if ignored cause premature failure.
• 'Continuity' of performance is an implicit objective for the building envelope. The increased performance we now expect from our building envelopes, where internal conditions are held further apart from the external environment, means design has to be more rigorous to achieve this. Continuity of the measures to achieve continuity of performance has become more critical, whether at the air tightness line or thermal insulation. This might be obvious but it is only the Passivhaus standard that appears to recognise that continuity (by truly avoiding cold bridges and demanding a demonstrable air tightness performance) is an essential rather than a nice-to-have. By its nature, 'continuity' is often in conflict with 'separate lives'.
• 'Balance' is the objective that encompasses the equilibrium of environmental conditions, of structural forces, and distribution of resources. Achieving balance is often in conflict with the constraint of 'high to low'.
• The fifth, cautionary principle can be called 'creative pessimism' - accepting that in the world of building what can go wrong at some point will, and creatively anticipating it. I enjoyed Neil's restating this as the 'principle of forgiveness'.

The relevance of all this is that accepting and working with these principles by following some rules of thumb - 'going with the flow' - rather than fighting them against does reduce the risk of failure. Increasing thermal resistance towards the cold side and increasing vapour resistance towards the moist side is one such rule. External wall insulation still needs to be continuous but is inherently less risky than internal linings. Fighting against the principles always requires more highly stressed solutions, such as 100% vapour barriers. That is why we should all be concerned about the prospect of 'hard to treat' homes being internally lined with insulation.

Colin Rice, Cullinan Studio

*Addleson and Rice, Performance of Materials in Buildings, 1991

 Richard Griffiths from Parity Projects.

Q&A session following the three presentations.

The 'Healthy Retrofit' talk was presented by ASBP (Alliance for Sustainable Building Products) which is a cross sector, not for profit organisation, comprising building product manufacturers and distributors, specifiers, designers, architects, contractors, public interest and sustainability organisations, academics and other building practitioners.

The ASBP are committed to accelerating the transition to a high performance, healthy and low carbon built environment by championing the increased understanding and use of building products that meet demonstrably high standards of sustainability.

New Bee-ginnings

Last night our new office entered hospitality mode once again with the launch of the Angel Honey Club, becoming Cullinan Studio’s first Sustainability Event of the year.

Did you know that the average honey bee produces just 1/12^th of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime? This was the first of many thought-provoking facts presented to us by the young ‘Generators’ of The Honey Club - the eco-enterprise and vision of Global Generation, Urban Bees and Wolff Olins – whose aim is to build the biggest bee-friendly network in the world, by starting with the local community’. They currently have 100,000 bees in their living roof garden, and are looking for more premises on which to expand.

Fuelled with another of Global Generation’s locally grown and very tasty cooking, the evening brought together the people behind the project, along with architects, enthusiasts and others interested from the Islington area.

We were treated to a series of brief talks from founders and volunteers alike, who all emphasised the significance of the honey-bee and the vital role which they play, as well as the positive effect on the community and the importance of teaching the younger generation about caring for our world. It was truly inspiring to hear from enthusiastic young minds who rejoice in the knowledge and skills they have acquired, and to learn of The Honey Club’s mission.

A big thank you to the team at Global Generation for the wonderful food and the fascinating evening, with further thanks to the Generators as well as those from Urban Bees, Wolff Olins, the Guardian and Central St Martin’s who came to share their experiences.

To learn more please visit the Honey Club website, and watch this space for further upcoming Cullinan Studio sustainability events!

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.

Sustainability Talk 2: Simon Smith

On Thursday 25th March a lively debate on low carbon structures ensued at Edward Cullinan Architects (ECA). Simon Smith, a structural engineer and director at Ramboll (formerly Whitbybird), was invited to present a talk on embodied carbon in construction. The talk was the second in a series of sustainable talks being held at ECA this year.

Simon is also a TRADA (Timber Research and Development Association) board director and a design teaching fellow at Cambridge University. Simon presented some of the research on low carbon structures that Ramboll are conducting with Cambridge University. He was recently voted ‘Green Guru Engineer’ at Building Magazine’s online sustainability seminar for his team’s work in reducing the embodied carbon in structures, some 6000tCO2 over the last 5 years.

In the audience we had members of ECA, the Building Centre, Hoare Lea, Arup and Hattie Hartman, currently best known for her sustainable blog – footprint – part of the Architects’ Journal.

The talk promoted timber structures and in particular cross-laminated timber structures as performing the best in terms of carbon; currently cross-laminated timber is imported from Europe – mainly Austria – and is made of softwood glued together (water-based glues). The current negative aspects are transport, in terms of carbon, and costs because of the strength of the Euro. However, Simon’s view is that within the next 10 years Britain will be manufacturing the structural panels (importing material) ourselves and reminded us of the National Tree Planting Year slogan, “plant a tree in ‘73”, suggesting that Britain may even be able to supply the material in the future too.

ECA’s first sustainable talk was by RockTron on carbon positive concrete. The next talk entitled ‘Zero carbon development: How low can we go?’ will be by Ashley Bateson of Hoare Lea regarding recent advice to the government on how to achieve the targets set for 2016.

Lara

Sustainability Talk 1: RockTron

Last Thursday (28th January) we held our first talk in a Sustainability Series, where inventor and entrepreneur, Philip Michael, showed his innovative transformation of waste flyash into the carbon-positive RockTron Alpha, which has now been adopted by three of the major ready-mix companies in the UK and is generating a massive interest around the world wherever there are coal-fired power stations.

For architects wanting colour-consistent fair-face concrete this is exciting news, as the Alpha product is a pure light grey in colour, which is unlike PFAs that still contain mobile heavy metals, including iron, and so have a yellowy hue.
RockTron's proprietary benefication process designed to recycle 100% of fly ash waste from coal-fire power stations produces five valuable eco-minerals; one of which is recycled carbon fuel reburnt in the power stations, producing more energy than the manufacturing process uses. RockTron are now exploring uses for these other high-performance by-products in the Pre-cast concrete, Thermoplastics, Vinyl and Tyre Manufacturing industries, as well as light-weight fillers for the Automotive, Aeropace and the Electronics industries, thus 'greening' a number of supply chains. RockTron, who have already won the Nicklin Medal at the IChemE Awards were also awarded the Fossil Fuels award at the Rushlight Awards for their technology advancement in reducing the need for burning fossil fules.

More information on RockTron can be found at their website


This picture illustrates raw fly ash before processing where the carbon; CarbTron are separated leaving the cleaner Alpha product. The photos were taken with a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM).

Zero Carbon (Schools) Task Force

On 10th December I presented Ed Balls, Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), Secretary of State and his Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Diana Johnson, with the main recommendations of the Zero Carbon Task Force I have been chairing for nearly two years.

The Task Force and the officials were expecting him to breeze in and thank us for all our hard work, only to be invited to sit down and explain our thoughts in a robust conversation for some 20 minutes. The Task Force was persuaded early on that Zero Carbon was first about behaviour change, and only then technical, and we adopted the Bill Bordass mantra "halve the demand, double the efficiency and halve the carbon in the supply and you are down to one eighth of the emissions".

10:10

The 10:10 climate change campaign is the brainchild of Franny Armstrong (Director of 'The Age of Stupid' film) and was launched today in partnership with The Guardian. Ted Cullinan is one of many well-known individuals and organisations from the arts, sport, tv, politics, etc., to have joined the campaign. Ted joined them this afternoon for the official launch in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall.

The project aims to bring every sector of British society to work together to achieve a 10% cut in the UK's carbon emissions in 2010. Scientists now agree that global emissions must peak within the next five to ten years and then begin to fall. 10:10 believes that in order to give ourselves a chance, we need to act now. By cutting emissions by 10%, it provides an immediate action that is achievable for everyone. This is a brilliant first step towards the 85% cuts by 2050.

Ted designed and built his own passive-solar house in Camden in 1964, and this has recently been listed Grade II*. But buildings are currently responsible for 40% of UK emissions, so there is a lot for us architects to be doing. Our practice has been monitoring its footprint for just under two years and although originally aiming for a 5% reduction in utilities usage, we are now well on target for a 20% reduction, comparing 2009 against 2008 consumption.

On his return to the office Ted said of the inauguration that it was "brilliantly organised chaos".