thinking about the passivhaus conference

It's a few weeks since the Passivhaus conference, after the busy time running up to the event, I've been thinking about what was significant about it: there was a real buzz of excitement, and a great feeling that something new is really taking off here in the UK.

It was such a coming together of all the building professionals who already have lots of expertise in passivhaus, knowledge and experience of sustainable design, and lots of new people too.

The talks I heard were great, doing a call for papers meant there was a really wide range of presentations, and it was so good to hear about a range of UK completed projects, and be able to visit some.

It felt like a good successor to last year's great conference, bigger, more established, and it was really well organized event. People especially liked the light and space of the conservatory, and there was lots of opportunity to talk.

But the importance of the event seems to me to be a feeling of gathering momentum- picking up clients, planners, architects, contractors, suppliers, local authority legislators - all the people who are needed to really role out new and refurbished buildings to the standard we know will perform. When I think how much has changed over the last few years it makes me feel really hopeful.

Apologies to anyone who had to listening to me hoarsely whispering on the second day, loosing your voice at a conference is just bad planning!
Fran

uncovering centre 404

Building work is under way on Centre 404 on Camden Road. At basement level, foundation for the new garden room have been excavated and old partitions taken down, uncovering the history and timeline of the building. We've found beautiful layers of old wallpaper, decorative tiles as well as old lath and paster work… as well as some less interesting, more recent additions!

We're thrilled about watching the building work progress - connecting the building to the garden, opening up the space and making Centre 404 more accessible to all.

Anne curates walk in Aldgate

Anne Thorne has curated a walk around Aldgate focused on Gender. Other walks by Muf's Liza Fior, Graham Fisher of Toynbee Hall and artist Kate Rich have looked at Faith, Philantropy and Trade taking as a study area anywhere within 10 minutes walk of Aldgate tube station. The walks are part of a much wider project done in collaboration with Publica which will see over 600 students from the Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Design and The Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Media and Design thinking about this area and developing site-specific projects.

Anne's talk looked at the Aldgate Subways, Women in the Guilds, Women in the City (or lack of), Women's Library, Brick Lane (Heba Women's Project and SsBA), the Royal London Hospital (nursing, midwifery, Florence Nightingale's influence on ward design, Elizabeth Fry) and the Jagonari women's centre and the work of Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative.

refurbishment and extension to listed building in Stoke Newington

The major refurbishment and extension to 237 Stoke Newington Church Street has been completed. The Grade II listed building is part of the Clissold Park Conservation Area. ATA assisted Eaves Developments with all stages of Planning, Listed Building consent and detail design. Three stunning flats fronting onto the Park, and onto a beautiful garden at the rear, have been skilfully developed. Efficient boilers, internal insulation, solar panels and organic paints coexist with original fixtures on this mid-18th C house.

A good term for Biomimicry

I miss Anna Maria Orru!
We met at ATA's office, then in Islington, in 2003. Amongst other things she was running the refurbishment of Holles House, a block of flats in the Angell Town Estate, in Brixton. I, then on my year out, was working on the new building at Boatemah Walk, also at Angell Town. We've been close friends ever since. She left ATA a few months later and spend five or six years working with other interesting people, mostly in the field of sustainable design and later of Biomimicry. Just over a year and a half ago she settled in Stockholm. Part of me envies her... She's done it, alone, with a handful of contacts and a head full of ideas.
This term she's running a course at KTH on nature-inspired architecture and urbanism - I really wish I could be there. In the first lecture they look at the work of Hans Haacke, followed on by the 'systems-thinking (the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole) aspect of ecosystems'. If you happen to be in Gothenburg at the end of the month, check out her seminar at the Nordic Architecture Fair.
And follow her blog here.
Also out just a few days ago is Michael Pawlin's new book Biomimicry in Architecture (Anna Maria was a collaborator at Exploration Architecture). It looks interesting and has a wonderful cover photograph.

But shouldn't all of us, designers, be looking at nature more? I can't think of anything more natural that to mimic the very best.

For a good read on Biomimicry try Janine Benyus book or watch her TED talk.

The UK Passivhaus Conference 2011

The UK Passivhaus Conference is going to be full of the latest information about passivhaus projects - newbuild and retrofit -  in the UK, talks by practitioners, academics, clients, contractors, and occupants, so you can find out anything and everything you wanted to know about Passivhaus. Jennie Swain from ATA will be talking about retrofit and using natural materials and Fran Bradshaw chairing one of the group sessions.
There will be discussion workshops about what are the barriers and the opportunities to developing passivhaus, and policy directions, visits to the Bere Architects refurbished Mayville Community Centre, and it looks as if it is going to be the conference of the autumn, come and join us!

Current Building Research

Last week was a great opportunity to see different approaches to building research here in the UK and in Germany.

At Insite 11 at the BRE on 'Rethink Refurbishment' we participated in the Technology Strategy Board Low Carbon Retrofit workshop; nine brief contributions on different aspects of the 'Retrofit for the Future' projects, ours on using natural and breathable materials, all fascinating, and raising lots of questions.
The Innovation Zone featured some good ideas - it'd be good to hear more about the cellulose based aerogel insulation, if it gets taken up by a manufacturer. We hope so.


On Friday Ecological Building Systems organised  'Challenges and Solutions to Thermally Upgrading Existing Masonry Walls with Internal Insulation' Among other great talks, Dr Rudolph Plagge from The Institute of Building Climatology at Dresden University of Technology spoke in detail about the science behind working with existing buildings in a sympathetic way. He showed examples like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where upgrading the building thermally and conserving the exquisite brickwork was undertaken so thoughtfully,  with research backup so that the Museum could be really confident of the effect of insulation on moisture travelling through walls, frost action, mould growth, and improved thermal performance. Several of us present at the workshop felt that there is a real need to develop further links with this research institution.

Thank you!

Thanks so much to those of you that came to our party last night, it was so great to see everybody, we were overwhelmed by the lovely feeling of celebration and appreciation, and felt so lucky to have been and to be able to work with such great people - as clients, contractors, consultants and friends.

Keep us in mind for future projects, we're a bunch with wide ranging interests, and love doing something different, as well as developing our core interests.

Thanks to Ben Croxford for the photo!

Read the AJ Footprint post here.

Reflecting on 20 years of practice and new directions

Anne Thorne Architects
Reflecting on 20 years of practice and new directions
In conversation with Hattie Hartman, architect and AJ sustainability editor
August 2011

ATA have put together a small publication to celebrate their 20th birthday and the 1st of ATA LLP. Download it here.

Green Sky Thinking

'Green Sky Thinking' took off this week with breakfast launch in splendour at Carlton House Terrace, home of the Royal College of Pathologists - as Paul Morrell pointed out in his address, their strapline 'the science behind the cure' is entirely appropriate to describe our work.
It then moved (I hope significantly) nearer Westminster to the Energy Saving Trust, focussing on 'Engaging People in the Retrofit process'  where Peter Rickerby introduced the Institute for Sustainablility retrofit guide sequence. These look as if they are going to be really useful, obtainable through the FLASH programme.

I and Matt Bush from Metropolitan Housing Trust spoke about joint 'Retrofit for the Future' and other projects, and getting residents to get the best out of low energy houses through understanding how the building works. The design of heating controls seems like a perfect challenge for some really creative 'green skies thinking'.
FB

At the AECB conference

The AECB conference was in Nottingham University this year, and we got to hear a bit about the Hopkins campus and see the demonstration houses there (and observe some of the many things that can go wrong with low energy design and how not to install MVHR).
As usual the greatest pleasure is talking to the people one only gets to meet at AECB conferences, and catch up on the years' events, but equally the workshops I went to were fascinating and the discussions were really good...
I chaired the 'does language matter?' workshop - a rhetorical question of course, people had such a lot to say and it reminded me that AECB people aren't just the most knowledgeable people around about low energy design and building, they are also incredibly thoughtful and interesting on wider political/social matters. A great pleasure - as always.
More here
FB

Inside Housing Discusses the Realities of Retrofit Roll-Out

There's been so much interest in our Retrofit for the Future projects which is fantastic as reducing CO2 emissions and increasing comfort and fuel security in our existing housing stock is a prescient issue.

Inside Housing focused this week on some of the pragmatic issues, and the issue of the sheer numbers of dwellings that need to be improved.

Read Full Article Here...

Johnathan Porritt at the TCPA

Jonathan Porritt gave the Frederic J Osborn Memorial lecture 2011 for the Town and Country Planning Association on monday night - a witty and devastating appraisal of the Localism bill - where 'sustainable development'  is mentioned uncountable number of times, but is never defined  and is therefore meaningless. 

He identified a number of government papers on environmental limits and ecosystem services which were clearly not referenced, and pointed out the lack of reference to 'place making, well-being of communities and health - all of which are not mentioned at all.

So its over to us all to take it up: we want a definition, the sustainable development commission gave us the pretty useful 5 principles, they need to be embedded in the document.

Chatting afterwards to one of the few developers in the room, I was told that 'meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' was in there somewhere,  so maybe it needs to be brought to the front of the document!

Get writing all!

ATA Teaching at CAT Summer School

Fran and Junko spent a most enjoyable couple of days at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) architecture diploma summer school, talking about projects and about participatory design. A workshop in which we played the architects and students were allowed to be clients had us all laughing, but illustrated a great truth - bringing all the participants into the design process makes it much more interesting!

Delightful too to see the setting out drawings for the timber building in the woods, and the photos of the build in action, we love the bird hide, even if birds might hide in it better than humans

Click here to see a fantastic video by the CAT students of their bird hide construction, and here for photos taken by the students.

ATA Celebrates 20 Years!

Anne Thorne Architects invites you to celebrate its 20th birthday and the 1st of ATA LLP