Sustainable Design Skills: Architects in London Share Their Experiences

By Harriet Thorpe

A new book titled ‘The Sustainable City’ profiles progressive green building case studies across the city of London alongside interviews with their architects. Here author Harriet Thorpe reflects on some of the valuable skills and experiences shared within the book. Harriet is a London based architecture and design journalist with an interest in sustainability and sustainable living.

While there are many diverse routes to achieving a sustainable design, all dependent on the type, scale and scope of an architectural project, there are certain skills that will come in handy across all of them. The process of researching for ‘The Sustainable City’ published by Hoxton Mini Press – a book exploring innovative sustainable buildings in London – involved listening to the experiences, challenges and insights of architects working in sustainable design. Across these conversations, many of them highlighted recurring skills that show how sustainability, as much as it is a set of practical decisions, is also a state of mind and an approach – one that requires skills such as compassion, holistic vision and experimentation.

Holistic Visions

From interrogating material supply chains, to enabling healthier choices for inhabitants, buildings have a change-making power that reaches far beyond their walls. Sustainable thinking can be applied to every single layer of design making waves of sustainable impact, and to truly see this potential, a holistic vision is essential. Holistic thinking was integral to one of London’s most famously pioneering eco-housing developments, BedZed, completed in 2002. Developer Bioregional, a charity and social enterprise focussed on sustainability, took on the role of ensuring every step in the process was conscious of its environmental impact: “People think of sustainability as an add-on, but it needs to be incorporated into design thinking from the beginning,” says environmentalist and social entrepreneur Sue Riddlestone, co-founder of Bioregional. She is proud that it is still making positive waves 20 years later today: “A zero carbon building was our brief to the architects, but what we brought to BedZed was zero-carbon sustainable living in a very holistic way.”

Energy for Experimentation

Experimentation is not easy in the architecture industry – it is a sector known for relentless compromise in the face of budgets and risk-averse clients. Yet disrupting the unsustainable status quo is essential to building more sustainably. One architect making inroads into using more sustainable materials and emboldening clients to invest in progress in that area is Nimi Attanayake of Nimtim architects. Working on house extensions and renovations across London, she believes that experimentation on the small scale can make a big difference in the industry, where precedents need to be set and people need to be inspired. One of her house projects in South London has become just this; it shows how cork can be used as an ideal insulator, a rainproof cladding, a great acoustic buffer and set a mood-enhancing biophilic atmosphere. For Nimi, experimentation requires good communication and relationships with clients: “When presenting different material options to clients, we try to empower them to make bold, unorthodox decisions. There is an element of embracing the unknown when trying out new materials, but we give them that life to take on, and then we return to see how the material is settling into its environment.”

Sustainability by Numbers

In this urgent moment of the climate crisis, reducing our energy use through building design is extremely important. In complex city contexts, pushing the envelope into its most energy-efficient form is a science led by calculations that model the ideal balance of light, heat and ventilation in a building. Working on this type of modelling is passive design engineer Katie Clemence-Jackson who worked on the UK’s first Passive House housing estate, commissioned by Camden Council in London. The Passive House buildings replaced part of a 1960s housing estate and the new design resulted in a 70 percent reduction in energy demand – as well as added benefits to health and wellbeing including more daylight in the homes, balconies or gardens for every home, and better air quality. Katie explains that while the Passive House design is a science that reduces energy by numbers, it translates into a better quality of life: “There are no draughts, making for very comfortable conditions. Fewer sources of heat are needed because the homes are so well-insulated and airtight, and you can open windows without it becoming too cold.”

Compassion, Listening and Imagination

“The key to sustainability is to imagine and then inhabit a world that is different to the one we live in now,” says artist Katharine Clarke, co-founder of MUF Architecture/Art. Her playground design at Golden Lane housing estate, one of London’s famous inner-city post-war housing estates, was about sparking a dialogue between children and materials. By combining unconventional reclaimed, recycled and natural materials in this playground, she wanted to encourage confidence, curiosity and adventure in children through developing authentic relationships with materials. Katherine ran workshops with local children involving drawing, model-making and observation exercises to think about the design of the playground – always bringing the design back to the user and their experience.

Thoughtful Research
Many of the case studies in the book showed how a deep knowledge of local context (from seeking opportunities for material re-use, to the understanding the needs of the wider community and eco-system) is vital to sustainable design. For example at the Museum of the Home in Hoxton, East London – which consists of a storied complex of buildings including a 300-year-old almshouse, a Georgian terrace, a 90s pavilion and a Victorian pub – careful site research resulted in a more space efficient redesign that prevented the need to demolish the pub. The retrofit reduced the need for new materials for the project and resulted in the clever re-use of materials and space. Architect Naila Yousuf explains her process: “We look at historical area maps to find out what happened in the past, as a building only ever exists because of its place and setting. That is what inevitably grounds a project: the building and the context guide you, rather than you imposing your ideas on a site.”