Threshold refreshed

Our house is on the road leading out of town, where nineteenth century builders developed a few plots at a time, setting the houses 18 feet back from the boundary, with a hedge, a gate and a path to the front door.

Twenty years ago when we moved in we replaced the decayed front gate. Twenty years on, that one too has succumbed to the weather  - and the original posts have rotted too.

Seemed like an opportunity to do a bit more, to 'celebrate the necessary', and in line with recent reflections on physiognomy, to make the house-mouth speak with a more confidence and enthusiasm.

A roofed gate on the boundary marks and celebrates the threshold between two kinds of space, whether public and private, the town and the countryside or even between profane and sacred - as in the Japanese Tori Gate and countless Asian examples. 









The roof is a foretaste of the shelter to be provided, whether in the traditional church lychgate, or the 1929 example of Le Corbusier's Salvation Army hostel, where the two storey porch is the start of a wonderfully choreographed route to a place of refuge. 

Our new gate is made of green oak, with the 75mm posts set in 600mm deep 150mm dia holes, backfilled with an angular sub-base gravel to both drain and bind. Rot normally seems to occur at the ground to air margin, so I've tried a experiment of charring a 400mm section around the ground line with a blow torch. These black gaiters look rather good marking the base of the posts. 

The gate frame itself is made of 12 year old seasoned oak, recycled from an earlier project - a case study for resource efficient re-use of timber in construction, something  we plan to explore more this year.




A composition of dancing curves, adding a bit of delight to the streetscape.

Green Sky Thinking: ‘Retrofit: Do It Yourself?’

When it comes to a retrofit project, a client is wise to exercise malleable expectations from the outset.  This was one of several ‘lessons learnt’ demonstrated by Cullinan Studio at their Green Sky Thinking event, where they discussed the recent retrofit of their own new canal-side offices in Angel, Islington. Prior to the conversion this three-storey post-industrial building, historically a foundry, was one of the few that remained relatively untouched in the area. At the event, the project’s director Johnny Winter spoke candidly about the whole process from planning right through to post-occupancy data. It is notable that the project still managed to achieve BREEAM Excellent, despite its significant constraints.

Johnny Winter explains the structural strategies employed

Having bought a large portion of Baldwin Terrace in 1991, Cullinan Studio chose the central building in the terrace to become its new home. The practice initially set out with high expectations of their own time, budget and manpower. Johnny joked about their well-meant positivity, which spurred them into hoping they could morph the building into suitable offices during weekend DIY sessions over a three month period. However, as the end of their lease in Camden drew near, they were forced to retreat next door, to a more structurally sound and adaptable building they had earmarked for redevelopment into flats. Here they were to remain “temporarily” for the next 20 years. In the meantime, the old foundry building was rented out as artists’ workspace and an exhibition gallery.

  

Whilst in retreat next door, the practice spent time on an ambitious design to replace the old foundry building, only to have the planning application rejected upon submission in 2004. As the practice took stock and redesigned, a planning conservation officer revealed the significance of the canal-side wall, which was deemed of special interest due to its position on the edge of a conservation area. The retention of this wall, along with the timber trusses spanning the roof, became a key planning condition, and inevitably a driver for the whole redesign. The wall required serious structural intervention, with its upper edge listing 180mm out toward the canal. After quite a struggle, planning permission was finally achieved in 2008, although unfortunate timing with the recession meant the project still stalled for another three years before construction.

Building tour: the retained timber trusses 

The approved design kept the building structure and listed wall intact but planned a ‘fabric first’ approach of super-insulating the walls, floors and roof. The recycled newspaper insulation on the canal wall ended up particularly thick; sprayed on up to 450mm deep in places due to the undulation of the wall. Despite the structural constraints and the preservative approach to the building’s fabric, the practice endeavoured to create a dynamic working environment, by ensuring all three levels were visually and acoustically connected in section. The Green Sky Thinking audience was curious as to whether the practice had considered further negotiation with the conservation officer. Johnny was almost certain that the issue was non-negotiable – had the practice gone to appeal there was a risk that the whole building could have ended up listed, upending the whole design process.

Yet in the end, dealing with the listing wall proved to be a defining architectural feature of the project. The engineers for the project, Price & Myers, had originally designed a temporary retention structure to hold the listing canal wall, while the existing trusses were taken away for cleaning and storage during the main building works. A permanent steel retention structure would then be installed after. However, the practice was keen to reduce the hassle and the waste of two separate structures, and so redesigned the scheme with in-house structural expertise to include a singular Vierendeel truss (amusingly mispronounced by the contractor as a “venereal truss”). This truss could be installed as a permanent retention structure at the same time as the footings. When construction finally began in 2011, the listing wall now 250mm out of plum, necessitating some temporary bracing prior to installation of the Vierendeel. The building’s dynamically connected levels were also simplified in both plan and section, retaining two linked floors for the practice’s use and a separated top floor, meaning they now had a lettable space.

Building tour: the mezzanine overlooking the Vierendeel

The energy-saving practices implemented on the project were subject to several recognisable issues. Four years after the application the planned methods had become either unattainably expensive or outdated; the canal inlet could not be used for water-based cooling due to hefty British Waterways fees and a wind survey revealed the planned five turbines would not produce a worthwhile output. In place of these other tenets of sustainability had to be amped up, such as the aforementioned fabric retention, the use of recycled newspaper and super insulation. Indeed the fabric detailing has worked favourably with a pressure test of less than 5ac/h, an encouraging measure for an existing building. The offices are naturally ventilated, the pleasantness of which was confirmed on the day the Green Sky Thinking event by the mild spring air percolating in from the Regent’s Canal.

Now that the building has been occupied for a few months, Cullinan Studio have been able to take stock of its energy use. Johnny noted that the Building Management System (BMS) has provided them with some data, but has been frustrating due to it being almost too specialised. So they have been able to identify when and how the building is malfunctioning but not why! The existing lift overrun now houses an air source heat pump that serves all the building’s heating needs, contrasting with the 22m² of photovoltaic panels, which have supplied a modest 600kW since October 2011. A question cropped up here: why didn’t they design in a larger array? It was an obvious cost issue, but there was a suggestion from the practice’s own Robin Nicholson that the amount of VAT paid for the conversion could have been better spent on more photovoltaics. Cost reductions have also meant insufficient absorptive acoustic material on the canal-level floor, causing kitchen noise to reverberate up into the mezzanine – an ongoing issue that will be rectified in due course.

Robin Nicholson on current planning attitudes

Looking to the future, with a dwindling postindustrial landscape left to be canabalised, the retrofit issue is quietly gathering gravitas. When it comes to building conservation versus the imperatives of energy-use reduction, the balance will have to shift. This was neatly summed up by Robin, who used the example of planners’ reluctance to retrofit Georgian sash windows with double-glazing to show that “planners need to wake up to retrofit”.

Meanwhile, in the case of Cullinan Studio’s Foundry, the necessity of retrofit made for a more challenging and interesting project. At the start of the project, retrofit was not the go-to option, rather it was resultant from a circumstantial cocktail of economic climate and planning conditions. Of course, the audience was keen to know if the practice would still have chosen retrofit without the imposed planning controls. Initially Johnny said he would have taken down the building and rebuilt, hopefully using reclaimed bricks from the site. However it was the process of engaging in retrofit that has actually swayed that original stance, and that “seeing an old building injected with a new lease of life was inspiring.” It is hard not to agree, the resulting building has become an object that is both pleasantly bespoke and inherently of its place.

Allowable Solutions, Pennies from Heaven?

This month we were joined by James Blackburn of Carbon Green Consulting Ltd for a CPD seminar about Sustainable Development in relation to the new National Planning Policy Framework and upcoming changes to Part L of the Building Regs.  We were also joined by our friends from the Sustainable Development Foundation for what turned out to be a lively debate.

James’ engaging presentation explained the key driving principles behind the new policies relating to sustainability, and took us through the broader implications in relation to the government’s zero carbon agenda and housing development (the full presentation is available to download on the CGC website).

A memorable image from the talk was that of swooning ‘Ethel the planning officer’, in need of smelling salts following the shock induced by being presented with the NPPF – a document which claims to slash bureaucracy in Local Authorities by reducing over 1000 pages of policy to a document merely 80ish pages long.  But once over the excitement of reduced reading times, what exactly is on offer? 

The hot topic of the day turned out to be ‘Allowable Solutions’; a controversial carbon credits system which will allow housing developers to ‘top up’ their credit when target carbon reductions are too difficult to achieve.  This ‘topping up’ will manifest itself as a contribution through the Local Authority (not dissimilar to an S106 Agreement).   A myriad of ‘Possible Approved ‘ measures are currently offered up as acceptable forms of AS, including: ‘Green Deal, District Heating projects, Social Housing Retrofit, Renewable Energy, Embodied Carbon Initiatives, Low Carbon (LED) Lighting…’

Whilst it was generally acknowledged that the good intentions behind Allowable Solutions are a positive ‘step in the right direction’, they were generally met with suspicion.  Reactions during the discussion included: ‘Who will check that they have been carried out effectively and a resulting reduction in carbon has been achieved?’, ‘There are too many options, why isn’t there one clear programme that the money goes towards?’ and even, ‘Could the contractors pop round to the neighbours’ houses and offer to insulate their homes whilst they were at it?’… 

Pooling resources freed up by the scheme in order to build large-scale renewable infrastructures at regional or national level seems like a viable plan in terms of economies of scale, however, the apparently vague and multifaceted nature of AS in their current form doesn’t inspire confidence that this would be managed effectively. 

On taking a step back, there seems to be an obvious broken link in the cycle.  If a major factor behind the need for AS is the prohibitive cost of zero carbon building, why not use the money in the pot to subsidise carbon-cutting building products, therefore making them more appealing to home owners and housing developers?  As construction industry professionals, shouldn’t we be lobbying for a solution which would improve the quality of our building stock, rather than offsetting the problem elsewhere?

Affordable Solutions have the potential to accelerate carbon reduction, if these pennies from heaven are channelled in the right direction.  With some rapid re-thinking of the ‘Possible Approved’ measures, could AS help us hit zero carbon targets in 2016?  Food for thought.

Libya Calling: RIBA Mission to Tripoli, 24-28 March 2013

“There is a moral imperative… that the institute should contribute what it can to the reconstruction of countries that British planes have bombed,” said Building Design magazine’s Ellis Woodman of the RIBA’s recent partnering mission to Tripoli (‘Libya’s aid is some reparation’ – BD Online 28.03.13). The reality is a country whose bombsites are few, peripheral and largely ex-governmental; surgically removed by NATO with only minor pockmarking to even the nearest bystander apartments. First-timers to Libya do also leap to the “British planes have bombed…” conclusion. In fact it is 42 years of neglect, corruption, underinvestment, political isolation and woeful or hands-off planning that have achieved what no ordnance could have: decrepit infrastructure, poor quality buildings, gridlocked roads, fly-tipped left-over spaces, the oppression of civic expression and a denial of the street as a civic space. Here, in the legacies of dictatorship, lies the RIBA’s mission.

There is a “moral imperative” to this work, even if Woodman is right that “some soft diplomacy is at work in this engagement… brokering relationships that will ultimately be of profit to the RIBA’s members.” “Moral,” because as Architects, we have a duty to work for the betterment of the built environment, wherever the society that it serves. “Imperative,” because with a projected 20% growth in GDP this year alone (IMF), the world’s fifth largest oil reserves (now almost back to pre-war exports) but with only a caretaker government and still no agreed constitution, the built environment is more vulnerable than ever.

 

It is vulnerable because problems that were manifest during my time in Libya between 2009 and 2011 – money, land, cars and housing –have become yet more urgent. It has a money problem – too much of it but not enough experience to spend it wisely. It has a land problem – a population of 6m, mostly stretched across its 2000km long coastline (often without title) where sprawl, the protection of sites of national importance or the making of good streets and civic spaces is managed only by dated planning models, if at all. It has a car problem – streets choked to gridlock by an oil subsidy that still makes it cheaper to fill up with petrol than with water, stoked by a booming import market for hand-me-down EU cars at bargain prices. Chronic housing shortages persist, exacerbated by a young population that prefers to move out of the family home. Elhabib Alamin, the Minister for Culture and Civil Society, is all too aware of the problems and the coming explosion of infrastructure investment: “We have one year to design the software before the hardware starts to arrive.” For the relative newcomers to governance that we met and in the context of an international perception of volatility that discourages travel and collaboration, our RIBA mission was significant.

 

As investors look on, Libya’s Architects are stuck on the side lines. Their title is not recognised as distinct from Engineers and there was, until recently, no voice for the profession. Meanwhile, Architects suffer from the perception shared by Libya’s Urban Planning Authority (UPA), that “Architects do not offer spatial or planning ideas.” Indeed, despite the valiant leadership of Osama Abdul Hadi – head of Tripoli School of Architecture whom we met there on graduation day – a lack of engagement from the international architecture community has visibly distanced his students from the level of contextual, social, cultural, climatic and sustainability debate that guides good architecture elsewhere.

We are supporting a lecture series and teaching initiative from visiting Architects to energise schools with new ideas. Meanwhile, in the industry, it is hoped that new laws to guarantee knowledge exchange through collaboration with Libyan counterparts will undo the trend towards “suitcase architecture” that once dominated the pre-revolution outsourcing of Libya’s major projects. Cullinans’ on-going relationship with Sami Jaouda’s Libyan Engineering Office (himself a delegate to the RIBA mission) on the substantial Madinat Hadaek Shahat project was and is a rare exception of a collaborative project.

 

 

Something haschanged though. The cultural amnesia brought by Gadaffi’s quasi-socialist autocracy has left a longing for Libyan identity in its wake. After decades of Italian Occupation and post-war, Anglo-French military administration, preceded by centuries of colonisation by Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans, Libyan identity remains nebulous. Here again, we found Architects being turned to as part of the solution by The Minister for Culture (an archaeologist by training), the director of Libya’s Ancient Towns Administration and by the inspiring Ikram Bash Imam – Minister for Tourism and Libya’s first female Architect. “How will archaeologists ever know that here was Libya?” we were asked. With a professional and political class that is often Western-trained or until-recently exiled, Libyans will need to look more broadly to find their cultural identity.

It was the embryonic, Benghazi-based, Libyan Institute of Architects (LIA) who first approached the RIBA in 2012, leading to UKTI (UK Trade & Industry) backing for our March 2013 mission that included five RIBA representatives plus two of us with past working experience of the country. The LIA brought with them their Tripolitanian colleagues, the Libyan Board of Architecture (LBA) and, together, our joint Libyan-UK mission helped to extend a network that ranges from conservation (the Historic Towns Authority) to renewable technologies (the Renewable Energy Authority of Libya, REAOL).

 

With a supporting resource in the RIBA, these often young and UK-US-trained Architects plan to become the voice of their marginalised profession. Ministerial offers to sit on decision-making committees and invitations from the Planning and Housing authorities to take part in collaborative workshops make the prospect of an effective lobby group for better procedure, regulation, strategy and design review more than possible.

“Think of Libya as a drug addict,” a director of the Libyan Investment and Development Company (LIDCO) told us. “Like a clinic, Libyan Architects must organise themselves and be ready when the country turns to them for answers.”

Posted by Philip Graham who worked alongside Cullinan Studio’s Roddy Langmuir on heritage, housing and urban projects in Libya from 2009-2011.

#RIBAlibya

The physiognomy of buildings

Another point that Victoria  Haines' made in her Ecobuild presentation on research for CALEBRE on user barriers to retrofit has been rattling around in my mind. This was the observation that windows are particularly cherished as features that define the character of their homes. When people are considering improvements they are often concerned about the impact that alterations to windows will have on the character of their homes and are reluctant to change them, often knowing more about them than 'the experts'.

Is this just sentiment or an indication of something deeper? The observation highlighted an issue that has been intriguing me for a little while - the emotional connection between people and the appearance of a building. Not so much the building as a whole, but specifically the composition of the facade. Our former partner Jonathan Hale's probings on the relationship between architecture and the body suggest this area is under researched. We are used to thinking about this in aesthetic or performance rather than psychological terms.

There's been a lot in the news recently about the autism spectrum and Asperger's syndrome - even the recent dramatisation of the novel 'The curious incident of the dog in the night-time' drawing attention to it.  Sufferers have difficulties developing empathetic relationships with other people and have  impaired non-verbal behaviour such as poor eye contact or a total inability to read facial expressions.  

Whilst physiognomy - the practice of assessing a person's character by interpretation of their face - might be seen as pseudoscience, an appreciation of the importance of understanding body language or 'kinesics' in communication, leadership and successful group work has become mainstream. We make constant conscious and subconscious readings and judgements about people's character and mood by their appearance and gestures which we do well to recognise. 

I think there is a useful parallel with buildings, and that reading the facade in anthropomorphic terms can help develop a richer narrative about it - a new physiognomy of buildings.  As well as analysing a facade in functional and cultural terms, we should listen more closely to our emotional response. 

By ignoring or seeing as irrelevant the potential for this reading, we are in danger of suffering from a kind of Asperger's syndrome of architecture.

People often talk of windows as being the eyes of a building. Knowing how important eyes are to communication between people, it would not be surprising if windows added more to its character than other elements of the architectural composition.  As we demand more of our building envelopes to improve thermal comfort and control energy flows, we must not lose sight of those emotional responses that make us comfortable in our environment.  The CALEBRE research suggests the great retrofit mission might founder unless these too are recognised.

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?

Garden Cities - about flowers or land?

The latest Housebuilder magazine carries an article on the renewed interest in Garden Cities: 'The government want the industry to rediscover the joy of garden cities to help boost housing supply and create sustainable development'.  Nick Clegg, following the Coalition's line, says 'Garden Cities should be built across the heart of middle England'.

You can't help feeling that this interest comes from the appeal of the appearance of the Garden Cities, with the hope that Nimbyism will be less vigorous if 'high quality housing' is built.

Re-reading Howard's 'Garden Cities of Tomorrow' what is fascinating is that the physical vision can almost be condensed into Howard's short quote from Ruskin: '... clean and busy street within and the open country without, with a belt of beautiful garden and orchard around the walls, so that from any part of the city perfectly fresh aire and grass and sight of the horizon might be reachable in a few minutes walk'. But the essence of the ideas are not primarily about the city's physical appearance - certainly not its flowers - but how a new financial model could capture land value for the benefit of the community. In fact the bulk of the book is about the financial arrangements to make this work.

With our current crisis of housing with supply both inadequate and unaffordable, particularly for young people, this revolution in how land value is captured is arguably more pressing than it has ever been. We have have to get beyond the present system whereby land at low value is acquired by private companies to feed into the market at just the right rate to maximise profits for their shareholders, which bears no relation to real needs of the population.

Groups such as the  Community Land Trust movement are doing work to counteract the prevailing model. Interestingly, they are often local and small scale and the idea can work at any scale - they are certainly not imposed top-down to cover middle England. Letchworth and Welwyn Garden Cities were of course initiated as local enterprises.

Those who understand the economics of this model (such as Fred Harrsion who predicted our current crash and ensuing recession in 2005), argue that a complete overhaul of taxation system is needed, with a tax on the 'rents of land' replacing income and corporation tax altogether.

But that's another story ...