Brief Encounters
The mandatory period of stillness and reflection seems to be yielding positive results, as evidenced by the abundance of new works aimed at enhancing the industry’s responsibility towards the environment
By Veronica Simpson
HOMEGROWN WAS a small but beautifully formed exhibition at the Building Centre, London, which ran from January to April this year, exploring how the use of locally grown materials could transform our building culture as well as reduce the construction industry’s massive carbon footprint. Three eloquent films demonstrate the potentials for using low carbon materials such as straw, timber and hemp, combining them with modern prefabrication and panel technologies for reduced costs and increased efficiencies.
Curated by Paloma Gormley, Summer Islam and George Massoud, the exhibition was born out of the work and research they have evolved through their not-for-profit organisation Material Cultures (through which they teach sustainable architecture practice and thinking at the AA, the LSA and CSM). Surrounding the film is a display of sustainable building materials, taken from the Building Centre’s extensive materials lab (established in 1931) and also a fragrant, sculptural installation of fresh thatch, constructed on site.
While the exhibition will have ended by the time you read this, you should definitely avail yourself of one of the small and eloquent books the three authored, called Material Reform, published by MACK in autumn 2022, where they set out a compelling blueprint for radically altering the built environment’s culture, systems and ecologies, enriching the relationship between agriculture and architecture.
The Design for Planet Festival was launched in 2021, and last year garnered 7,000 attendees to its virtual show. Image Credit: Alan Richardson
Speaking at the launch, Gormley was inspired by the enthusiasm with which their students greet this alternative approach. But what about clients, I asked. No problem there, says Gormley – who has stepped away from Practice Architecture, which she co-founded back in the noughties, to work full time at Material Cultures. She tells me: ‘We felt confident we have enough clients to keep us busy. Some are private (residential) individuals, who are excited to be working in an experimental way.’
Making similar arguments, simultaneously, over at Portland House was the RIBA’s exhibition ‘Long Life, Low Energy: Designing for a Circular Economy’ (which ran November 2022 to April 2023). In publicity for the show, the RIBA quoted some shocking statistics: ‘The design, construction, maintenance and demolition of buildings…currently consumes 50% of all raw materials around the world.’ Furthermore, 63% of waste comes from construction sites – a mind-boggling 126 million tonnes – and 50,000 buildings are destroyed each year across the UK alone, ‘many of which could have been repurposed and retrofitted.’ Case studies at the exhibition included Wilkinson Eyre’s Battersea Power Station refit and two projects from BakerBrown Studio, where materials have been sourced directly from the site, reducing embodied carbon thanks to the lack of transportation.
The Design for Planet Festival was launched in 2021, and last year garnered 7,000 attendees to its virtual show. Image Credit: Alan Richardson
And the RIBA is, apparently, putting its money where its mouth is, with a planned refurbishment of its iconic HQ that will follow circular economy principles as much as possible. One of the key advisors on this scheme is architect Duncan Baker-Brown (founder of BakerBrown Studio), whose credentials as a pioneer of resilient and circular design were flagged up to FX readers in a column I wrote back in winter 2015 describing his Waste House in Brighton, made entirely from ‘rubbish’. Still teaching (as parttime principal lecturer and climate literacy champion) at the University of Brighton, Baker-Brown has been busy in the interim, demonstrating best climate neutral practice, both as an advocate and architect. He told me:
‘At the moment I’m doing a project with the Forestry Commission to supply genuinely sustainable timber for the construction industry from existing resources.’ For example, he says, coppicing woodlands every 25 years would not only yield substantial amounts of timber, but ‘you create greater biodiversity than if you leave it alone.’ We need to get better at joining up supply and demand, he agrees – pointing out that the many ash trees currently being culled due to ash dieback could quite happily be used in construction. Baker-Brown has one house on-site whose possible. One of the key advisors on this scheme is architect Duncan Baker-Brown (founder of BakerBrown Studio), whose credentials as a pioneer of resilient and circular design were flagged up to FX readers in a column I wrote back in winter 2015 describing his Waste House in Brighton, made entirely from ‘rubbish’. Still teaching (as part-time principal lecturer and climate literacy champion) at the University of Brighton, Baker-Brown has been busy in the interim, demonstrating best climate neutral practice, both as an advocate and architect. He told me: frame is entirely constructed from ash dieback, and yet, unfortunately, ‘at the moment we are burning tonnes of it rather than reusing it.’
However, Baker-Brown is generally encouraged by the growing support for sustainable construction. He points out that local authorities in cities around the UK (including Brighton, London, Exeter and Peterborough) are currently writing their own circular economy route maps. And a trawl through the projects on his own Lewes-based practice’s website reveals no shortage of clients for his timelessly contemporary and thoughtful homes that look as if they have been fashioned from the geology, the forests and the landscapes around them. Which (as stated above) in some cases, they have. ‘There’s a house underway where we’ve sorted and bagged 40 tonnes of chalk (from site excavation) to use in the construction,’ he says. On the same site, a dilapidated blockwork bungalow has been carefully dismantled so that its bricks can be used either as a floor finish or as aggregate for renders or screed. ‘It doesn’t save you money,’ he says, ‘but it does save you resources.’
A fragrant, sculptural installation of fresh thatch, constructed on-site at the Building Centre. Image Credit: Henry Woide
But architecture is only one part of the waste problem that current design methodologies exacerbate. Over at the Design Council, a major refurbishment of its own mission and purpose is already under way, under the banner Design for Planet. Current priorities include tackling waste in packaging, promoting retrofitting and repairability – essentially, the aim is to be designing things that can be fixed.
A fragrant, sculptural installation of fresh thatch, constructed on-site at the Building Centre. Image Credit: Henry Woide
Two years ago, they launched the first Design for Planet Festival in 2021, at the V&A Dundee. Last year it went virtual – but garnered 7,000 inernational participants. This year it is back in real life, and scheduled to take place in October, in Norwich on the campus of UEA (registration went live in April). There will be two days of talks and workshops to generate a much better informed design community across all disciplines, including graphics, fashion and interior design to ensure designing for a more sustainable planet is ingrained across the industry. I’m going to be booking a place, for sure. While it’s great to see so much grassroots and individual activity in rewriting the rules of how and why we design, it will take leadership to make new, resilient practices stick.
