Part L 2021 has been introduced specifically as a stepping stone, intended to help people prepare for the Future Homes and Buildings Standards in 2025. Having a better understanding of learning curves, however, suggests that the benefit of any preparation is likely to be lost when people are left playing catch-up with the next change.
Read MoreThe future ain't what it used to be: Designing and constructing buildings for the long term
We're really only just getting to grips with these things, when they're an essential part of a lower carbon, less resource intensive future. If we don't do them, and do them quickly, what will remain for us to deal with? Maybe not nuclear waste, but what other costs - economic and social - might we have to bear? And for how long will we have to bear them?
Read MoreWhat billions can buy you in home renovations
In my former life employed in architectural practice, I once worked with a client who wanted a wine cellar below his newly remodelled kitchen. Jeff Bezos, it turns out, has had a similar sort of wine room installed in his mansion in Washington, D.C. That, however, is where any similarities end with the house in Cheshire that I worked on.
Read MoreWhen construction marketing talks about reversing climate change
Glib suggestions that ‘specifying and installing product X’ could help to reverse climate change - could contribute to cooling a planet with more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than a human has ever experienced - really, really frustrate me.
Read MoreDown to earth with a bump: feeling let down by Zac Efron
Efron’s sparkling observations about the role of hydration in human health is as far as I’m going to get. The bonfire of my enthusiasm has been extinguished, had water poured on it, in little over an hour of programming. Who watched the final versions of these episodes prior to broadcast and said, “Yep, that’s exactly what we’re aiming for”?
Read MoreFly, you fools? The unbearable flightlessness of being
By not flying in 2019, I’m trying to make myself feel better about not pledging to go flightless next year. It’s either that or I try to copy Greta Thunberg. How much work could I get done on a two week catamaran journey across the Atlantic…?
Read MoreActions Speak Louder Than Words: How Do I Make a Difference?
We preserve our routines because it makes life easier, and because we don’t see the effect of inaction clearly enough. When it comes to expressing my own view, finding the voice is a start but it can’t be the whole thing. In which case: what’s next? What can I do differently?
Read MoreCreating a Dream Home: The Retrofit Dilemma
I never truly believed I had a shot at bidding for something offering so much potential. And I wasn’t really surprised that somebody could afford to pay at least 164% of the guide price and still turn it into a profit-making opportunity. Even so, the extent to which I didn’t stand chance was still rather demoralising.
Read MoreDriving Up Quality: Are We Due an Emissions Scandal in New Homes?
Once the full extent of the VW scandal became clear, it was not uncommon to hear suggestions that the performance of buildings - and housing specifically - should be highlighted as a similar scandal in an effort to raise public awareness.
How outraged were people really, though?
Read MoreClimate Change Protests: Won’t Somebody Think of the Children?
We can all reel off topics we think should have been taught at school. Subjects that might have made finding our way in the world that little bit easier; that would have been more relevant to our everyday lives. Mortgage interest rates over quadratic equations, that kind of thing. Is it time building performance became one of those subjects?
Read MoreWhat I Think About When I Worry About Talking (4)
The optimism communicated by much of the book is infectious. Its compelling arguments for a brighter future almost help you to forget chapter one’s alarming summary of how it will take nothing less than significant action to avoid reaching a tipping point for the climate in 20 or 30 years.
Read MoreBuilding Homes of the Future Today
People are fallible. Daily life and unexpected changes in routine get in the way. We put things off for a minute, and a minute turns into an hour or two or more. We forget to open windows, or we open them and we forget to close them again. We can learn to use an overly-complicated letterbox, but we struggle to operate our buildings properly.
Read MoreHealth warnings for buildings?
It's perfectly possible to construct buildings resilient enough to face this oncoming challenge, but the sad truth is that few are. There shouldn't be an excuse, but that's a post for another time. The even greater challenge is retrofitting existing buildings in a sensitive and holistic way to provide them with that resiliency.
Read MoreMaking Space(s) for Creativity
Sky-high land prices and poor quality existing building stock make it difficult for anybody to find healthy, comfortable and affordable places to live. For people in the creative industries, finding both places to live and studios or performance spaces that are fit for purpose is particularly difficult.
Read MoreBalancing Design and Specification
It should be second nature to check the age of 'news' these days, but I was too interested in the subject matter to immediately pay attention to the date of publication. As a piece on how buildings fail their users, it felt every bit a story made in 2018. To discover that it was actually written four and half years ago only served to show that performance gaps have been a problem for a long time, and lessons are slow in being learned.
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