The Secret Millionaire Visits Centre 404!

Centre 404 was featured on Channel 4's The Secret Millionaire programme. The money donated from the secret millionaire will continue to fund the centre's Juniors Club for the next year and a special event for the  family carers.


The centre has also been fundraising hard to get the building refurbished and disability access incorporated.  ATA are working with Centre 404 to create a more accessible new basement floor with new garden room, level access reception, accessible lift to all floors, changing places facilities and level access to their beautiful garden, which is why the fund raising is so important!

Centre 404 is a centre for carers of children with learning disabilities and works towards building a community and a society where people with learning disabilities are valued. 

Over the years Centre 404 has built vital services within the borough of Islington that have enabled children and adults with a learning disability and their carers to have a voice and to access community activities and support.

Innsbruck Inspiration!

ATA's Jennie Swain was at the 15th International Passivhaus Conference in Innsbruck on the 25-29th May. An inspirational conference, people, architecture, lots to digest....really interesting presentations on retrofit and cost effective passivhaus, and even a passivhaus cattle auction building!
Watch this space for Jennie's review and pictures from the Austrian Passivhaus building visits......


In the meantime, great blogs here on the conference by fellow UK passivhaus architects Jonathan Hines of Architype and Mark Elton of ECD

Tenant Feedback from Stoke Retrofit so far...

The tenants for the Stoke-On-Trent retrofit for the future project that Anne Thorne Architects carried out with Sanctuary Housing have given us some really interesting feedback from life living in their house so far. The house will be monitored for energy use and comfort conditions, and just as significant the recording of the tenant's views and experiences of living in the house.

"After our first two months here, we love our eco-house, and enjoy living here, and it’s good to feel environmentally responsible without having to make vast lifestyle changes."

Some really good feedback in living in a house with a heat recovery ventilation system, and feedback that we will move to improve on in future schemes and retrofits.

The tenants were involved along the design process, from the technical specification of the house and insulation levels, as well as choosing pain colours and finishes for their new home.

ATA seeks to gain feedback from completed buildings through our work with researchers to ensure we have detailed information on building performance, and can learn from it....!

Read more on the project blog here

Shared Learning Across Construction - Fran at ProBE

ATA's Fran Bradshaw presented a talk on Friday at Westminster University as part of the Centre for the Production of the Built Environment (ProBE) Symposium and Launch.

This symposium sought to identify key elements and strategies needed to develop a more integrated system of vocational education and training for the built environment in the UK.

Fran's talk discussed topics of shared learning potential across the construction industry and education, and Anne Thorne Architect's collaborative approach and experience in shared learning across their projects with clients, self-builders, construction professionals, young people and community groups.

Click Here to View Fran's Talk

Visit Probe Website Here

ATA working with LoCo Cohousing Group

ATA are working with the Cohousing group  London & Countryside Cohousing (LoCo) to develop a mutually supportive community, living in low energy homes, with some shared facilities, encouraging social contact and individual space, in a community managed by themselves, the residents. 

Affordable housing will form part of the scheme but all residents agree to the aims and objectives of Co-housing. As architects, ATA believe it is important to approach the designing of LoCo's new homes in the same way that they intend to the community to function. Our aim is to act a informed facilitators. 

Consultation and consensual decision making is a key part of the development process as well as the final project.

Passivhaus standards will be used for the homes and grey water recycling.  The houses will be built to Lifetime Homes standards  The group is a mixed community but with particular emphasis on the needs of older people.

Highwood Village Hall AECB Visit

As part of the London AECB group, we visited the lovely essex hamlet of Love Green, part of Highwood Village, to visit a community-led sustainable village hall build, almost complete. 

Community members Petra and Richard gave us a really inspiring talk through the life and story of the project, from the need to create a sustainable hub for the village, and a social centre for the local community that would also act as an exemplar low energy building for future development in the village.

A significant PV array, partly grant funded, on the roof is hoped to bring income to the community for reinvestment and running costs.

The community has future plans for a community orchard

Click here for more details on the project.

Fran speaking at Sustainability Now

Fran is speaking at Building Design's Sustainability Now online conference event at 3pm on 19th May. 

Chaired by Amanda Birch, Technical Editor of Buiding Design, Fran will be tackling Sustainable Architecture and Design in relation to minimising the negative environmental impact of buildings, and particularly the issue of Embodied carbon, as Anne Thorne Architect's has long championed the use of low-embodied energy materials through their work.

Another topic on the agenda and close to all at ATA's hearts is the issue of engaging with occupiers to achieve innovative design. Fran will be speaking alongside Robin Nicholson, Senior Partner at Edward Cullinan Architects, and Chris Twinn, Director, Arup.

Click here to listen to the talk...

http://www.sustainabilitynowevent.com/

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".