Works Starts on Wolves Lane Horticultural Centre Masterplan

(Image by Junko Suetake, ATA)

ATA have started work on a visionary masterplan for Wolves Lane Horticultural Centre in Haringey. The Centre provides the community with a great resource that includes a Plant Nursery and Garden Centre open to the public and for wholesale plant sales, educational visits from local schools, and a great cafe with the strongest homemade ginger beer i've ever tasted. There is also the gem of a Palm House which is well worth a visit

The centre provides a valuable training opportunities in catering and horticulture for people with disabilities, as well as volunteer opportunities for the wider local community.

An exciting project for ATA to get their teeth into!

Low Carbon Tricks for Old Bricks

"Traditional buildings: adapting for a low carbon future" was a very well attended conference with a great programme of speakers explored this issuing surrounding traditional buildings and techniques and desicussion around how you provide significant reductions in energy use, whilst remaining sympathetic to the character and fabric of our historic buildings.

Actual monitored U-Values of existing stone walls, limecrete floor construction, ventilation to existing buildings, and the possibility for renewables were all on the agenda.

Jennie of ATA spoke on behalf of the Passivhaus Trust, and as a Certified Passivhaus Designer and her experience of applying the Passivhaus Enerphit standards to our existing UK housing stock using natural insulation materials and breathing wall construction. To view Jennie's presentation, click here.

The joint conference was held by Cumbria Action for Sustainability, The North of England Civic Trust and the Churches Trust for Cumbria.

Click here for more details

Edwardian Terrace Retrofit BD Article published

Amanda Birch has written a great article in Building Design magazine on our Retrofit for the Future project for Metropolitan Housing Trust. ATA modeled the existing house using the Passivhaus Planning Package that enabled us to design and retrofit high levels of insulation and air-tightness to dramatically reduce the energy consumption of the building for heating, giving 80% reduction in the buildings carbon emissions.

Read full article here...

Hawthorn Road Retrofit features in Building Design

Great article on our Retrofit for the future project for Metropolitan Housing Trust that focuses on the technical experience of working on an Edwardian terraced house project to gain deep cuts in carbon emissions to reach the governments 2050 targets.
We used a passivhaus approach, as certified passivhaus designers, to model, calculate and super insulate the existing house. Read more here.....

BD Article

Treehugger Article

ATA Retrofit Article in Green Building Magazine

Fran and Jennie's article for Green Building Magazine ATA's two Retrofit for the Future projects is featured in this season's publication.  Click here to read more...

Stoke Retrofit Open Day Presentation

Great turn out at the open day held at St Luke St for our Retrofit for the Future project for Sanctuary Housing, which shows the level of interest in the realities and challenges of retrofitting our existing housing stock.

Presentations from contractor's Seddon, and Fran and Jennie from ATA gave all present a great insight and overview into all aspects of the project from design to completion on site.

Click here to view ATA's presentation of how we designed to reduce the CO2 emissions at St Luke St by over 80% using Passivhaus Enerphit approach

Passivhaus Retrofit Open Day at St Luke St

Beechmont Assisted Self-Build Project Opening

ATA were delighted to attend the opening of the assisted self-build scheme at Beechmont Close, a project, which we started to work on in 2005. Like many self build schemes, it takes determination and patience to bring such a scheme to fruition, but it was great to see so many of the people who had helped to make the project a success, and especially Nicolas Taylor, John Gillespie and Alison Marray  from Community Self build. The young people who were enrolled back in 2008 are now able to enjoy living in the flats they helped to build.  They worked on site with the Contractor, Enterprise and trained at Lewisham College. Some of them are now planning a career in the building industry.

One of the young people, a mother of two, was interviewed on completion of the build;-

"I always wanted to build my own house,  I did wood work in secondary school and it triggered off from there, just design and working with different materials, I didn’t really know how to get into it, so when I heard about this, I thought it was like a dream come true".

Jennie now official Certified Passivhaus Designer!

Jennie received her exam results today from the Passivhaus Institute in Darmstadt, Germany, confirming her new status as a Certified European Passivhaus Designer!

Jennie took the intense course and exam at Strathclyde University in December just before christmas, and it's been a tense few weeks waiting for the results.....

ATA are already designing to passivhaus standards, and now Jennie is a certified passivhaus designer, ATA have all the skills and expertise to deliver the quality of design and rigourous energy standards that the Passivhaus Institute demand - expertly detailed building fabric, low-energy ventilation and heating systems, comfortable, user-friendly houses, schools, public buildings and more.  Watch this space for news of future ATA passivhaus projects....... 

AECB London at Temple Yard

ATA hosted the AECB London group's first gathering of the year at their offices in Temple Yard this Wednesday. The theme was 'delicious details', and a great turn out of about 30 people stretched our drinks and nibbles to the limit, but kept our meeting room toasty warm with all the watts we were collectively emitting!

Many thanks to all who attended and contributed to the debate.

Click below for a summary of the evening, please feel free to comment below, and see you at the next AECB london meet....

Retrofit whips up a storm of discussion in the blogosphere

ATA's Retrofit for the Future project at Hawthorn Road has whipped up a storm of discussion in the blogosphere....

The Architects Journal blogged the article on the sustainability Footprint blog, but unfortunately didn't clearly express that the true project costs (Actual retrofit works cost £80K of TSB research and development funding - the £200k includes £120k that the housing association were spending on the house due to fire damage and major structural works - our retrofit - £80K - piggy-backed on this build.

Mark Brinkley's blog thought the £200k figure was the retrofit cost, which isn't the case, but an interesting debate was had below the blog, once the facts on the actual retrofit costs had been clarified (thanks to Andy for helping to put the facts straight!). 

Mark's blog is a good read and forum for anyone interested in a view on sustainable construction, very matter of fact and excellent self-build pragmatic comment.

ATA submit Lambeth Passivhaus Scheme for Planning

ATA have submitted their latest passivhaus scheme for planning approval. The scheme, located within a conservation area, includes three new-build four-bed family houses to passivhaus standard, that will be timber-frame construction.

The houses knit together an existing Victorian Terrace in Lambeth, that has been vacant since being bomb damaged during WW2. The scheme also carries out a major sustainable, low carbon refurbishment & retrofit to existing adjoined terrace houses  that will create 5 new flats.

Playtime at Harlow Fields School!

Pupils at Harlow Fields School are loving getting to grips with their interactive and sensory new playground!

ATA is working on a series of phased upgrades at Harlow Fields School and College, Essex, for pupils with special needs.   The new playground for primary children is with living willow tunnels, swings, and musical instruments. Green oak benches and a bamboo sun shelter with many planters give the playground a natural feel. The benches and bollards were commissioned Carpenter Oak Ltd to utilise the stock of off cuts. 

Open Day Great Success at Hawthorn Road Retrofit

The opening last friday of the Retrofit for the Future 'Haringey PassivTerrace' by Anne Thorne Architects for Metropolitan Housing Partnership, construction by Sandwood Design & Build, was attended by local MP Lynne Featherstone, and Councillor John Bevan, Housing Association representatives, housebuilders and lots of architects!

Existing House

The refurbishment works to 10 Hawthorn Road are to a very high energy standard, part of the ‘Retrofit for the Future’ programme, funded by the Technology Strategy Board to show how we can retrofit existing houses to achieve 80% reductions in CO2 emissions.

‘Passivhaus’ Principles Retrofit

We used Passivhaus design principles and components, concentrating on a 'Fabric First' approach with high levels of insulation and air-tightness to dramatically reduce the energy demand and CO2 emissions for this solid-walled terrace house.

The retrofitted house has been designed to consume over 80% less energy than the existing house, thereby reducing carbon emissions by 80%.  We used the Passivhaus Planning Package (PHPP) to model the existing and potential heating needs and energy use of the house, to allow us to see the effect of small adjustments to the design of insulation, quality of windows, air-tightness, cold bridging, ventilation strategies and heating & hot water systems.

A Natural Approach

This retrofit uses insulation materials from renewable sources, such as sheepswool and woodfibre insulation, and natural mineral plasters such as lime plasters internally and clay aggregate for chimney void fills.

These materials are used for their hygroscopic/vapour-open qualities to help deal with moisture within the existing building fabric, and also reduce the embodied energy of the retrofit materials in the house, actually sequestering / locking carbon into the build (unlike other forms of building materials, such as phenolic foamed insulation, etc,).

Predicted Space Heat Demand  = 31 kWh/sqm/yr

Predicted Heating Load  = 16 W/sqm

Predicted Primary Energy Use = 91 kWh/sqm/yr

Target CO2 Emissions = 18 kg CO2/sqm/yr

Bateman Mews Published!

Anne Thorne Architect's award-winning Bateman Mews project that was shortlisted for the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize has been been featured in the newly published 'Architecture 10 - RIBA Buildings of the Year' book. 

Hot off the press, the book features the award-winning projects of 2010, which includes the tactile cedar-shingle clad curves of Bateman Mews social housing scheme caught the eye of the architectural critics when it was completed last year.