Open House London 2012 Update

On the 22nd September, we will be at Centre 404 (Islington) and Eco-hub (site plan, Lordship Recreation Ground, Haringey) between 1-5 pm for Open House 2012. We are looking forward to seeing you.

We had expected the completion of the Eco-hub by now but Vinci Construction UK Ltd have been there for final touch. Therefore, the cafe has not been ready yet, but there will be our guided tour , presentation sheets and a lot of fun and food in the park by the Lordship Rec Festival.

See beautiful new river in the park! Also, the nearest Open House, which you may visit, is the Bruce Castle Museum along with a fantastic lion scaffolding sculpture, 'Park Art in Haringey' in the garden.

21st century homes event by the Highgate Society

On saturday I spoke about 'deep retrofit' at the 21st Century Homes event organised by the Highgate Society. A series of talks by experts included advice on all aspects of sustainable retrofit, the ones I heard were about boilers and solar hot water, about windows, about understanding the whole performance of the house, and they were extremely good and to the point. There were also stalls so that you could really look at insulation products, or different types of windows. When I arrived at midday on saturday the place was seething with people and humming with a busy exchange of ideas.

Apparently more than 200 visitors signed in at the event, and the following day, about 75 visits were made to local houses. Many of the visitors said they were about to embark on house projects and were actively seeking ideas and information, and that the event had been really useful to them.

This could be a great model for local areas, and it is inspiring that this organisiation, which is concerned about the quality of the historic buildings and environment is thinking so creatively about the future.

Fran

Eco-hub shortlisted for sustainability award

The Eco-hub at Lordship Park has been been shortlisted in the category of 'Sustainable Project of the Year' by the Builder and Engineer Awards 2012! Good choice!

Open House London 2012

 ATA's entry this year - If you have the guide book already, see page 35 for the Environment Centre (now called Eco-Hub) and page 41 for Centre 404, both for Saturday afternoon 22nd September. 
See our blog on 7 August too!

The Guide is available at the Open House website.

External Porch

 

A well ventilated & beautiful porch - reminded me about a Passive House. An external porch should be clearly outside the thermal envelop and ventilated in order to avoid condensation.

Photographs from my summer trip in Japan.

Junko

Lordship Rec Festival

To cerebrate the completion of the Environment Centre (now called Eco-Hub) and the park, the Lordship Rec Users Forum are launching a big festival on 22nd September 1-5 pm.

Besides the Open-House London at the Eco-Hub, there will be sports activities, cycling, games, dance, music, children's arts and play, and refreshment at the Eco-Hub cafe!

Festival Flyer and map are downloadable from their website.

Come and join!  And see you at the Eco-Hub.
Junko

Gearing up for Open House London

This year ATA will have two buildings open to the public during the Open House London weekend taking place on 22nd-23rd September.

Eco-hub -  the centrepiece of the regeneration and transformation of the historic Lordship Recreation Grounds, which has been designed to exemplary sustainable standards, including community-built straw bale walls, timber foundations, green roof, MVHR and natural materials and finishes.

Centre 404 (pictured) - a newly refurbished and extended Victorian villa with a non-institutional feel, taking consideration of environmental factors and energy efficiency.The centre on Camden Road is home to a charity supporting people with learning difficulties and their families.

Watch this space, more details closer to the event!
Rute

Centre 404 awaits hot summer

The green Oak pergola is complete and the vine ready to grow across to produce the first year of Chateau Caledonia wine (name yet to be confirmed)!

And last month we had the pleasure of showing designer and photographer Amandine Alessandra around the building - have a look at some of her work in progress photos of Centre 404 on our website.

AECB conference 2012

Detailed and wide ranging workshops featured at the annual AECB conference this year, as well as the best opportunity to meet up with the most knowledgable green people around. Having been involved in organising it, I still managed to enjoy it enormously - the only problem was wanting to go to workshops that were happening at the same time!

On the wide ranging, I heard Blanche Cameron from Resit talking about unusual partnerships for change, she had some great examples of action where one would least expect it - and Chris Baines also talked about working on the Elephant scheme to retain a huge mature tree canopy as a starting point for redevelopment while Neil May talked about an 'uncertainty principle' approach to retrofit.

On the detail, some great discussion of ventilation from Mark Siddall and WARM Associates, retrofit and dealing with moisture by Andy Simmons among others. It will all be on the website soon, so do go and have a look at those you missed.

Have a look at the AJ's Footptint blog on this year's conference.

The Passivhaus masterclass on saturday with Wolfgang Feist was also a great success.
Thanks to Nick for the picture!
Fran

Anne Thorne on ITV news

Anne talks about women in the building industry in the last 60 years: 'Change is happening, it's just a bit slow and it needs to speed up'.
The news crew visited ATA's projects Environment Centre and Granville Plus. Watch the full movie here.

iNDUSTRY workspace 3rd birthday bash

Lovely friday afternoon celebrating our joint office industry on adelaide wharf just across the road from Haggerston Park, with home-made delicacies and local beer from London fields micro-brewery. More photos courtesy of Stefan Mueller here. 

London's public realm conference

On the first day of summer, that's what it felt like, I cycled down to Toynbee Hall to attend the 'Changing Spaces: Sustaining good design and creative intervention in London's public realm'. This is a familiar area as I and others have been doing small projects here with students on the London Met foundation in architecture course. It's easy to forget about this tucked away institution and I was glad to have an excuse to come back.

The conference was jointly organised by Open City (formerly known as Open House) who are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year and the London Borough of Enfield. Lee Mallet from Urbik Limited and Greater London Publishing kicked off with tales of places that attract artists, mostly anecdotal tales of Shoreditch back in the day. He was followed by Suzie Zuber from Open City (I love their simple and evocative slogan: 'opening eyes, minds and doors') who went over their work with young people, advocacy & enabling and design reviews  - quite a bit more than just the September open house weekend.

Fabric First day at the sparkling new CoRE building in Longton, Stoke. It has a roof packed with pv panels, and a great view of the pottery factory with bottle kilns being refurbished for the conference centre. Not sure of their future use, I asked if they were going to be seminar pods?The place feels jumping with proposals, including a report from Stoke Council on their plans for an electricity generating and low energy Stoke - proposals include using waste heat from ceramics factories.  Andrew Ainsworth of Room 4 consulting, presented the report, 'Fabric First and Refurbishment Excellence: Up-skilling to Deliver the Green Deal and Beyond', follows months of research into the skills and training needs of the construction industry, which you can download from their website. Neil May spoke about the lack of proper research into how to work with traditional buildings, Lynne Sullivan on retrofitting to scale - a tower block in London using PHPP as guide, which neatly followed my talk on St Luke St in Stoke, the Retrofit for the Future house, which was designed with phpp.
Fran

West Hendon in Architecture Today

Read the on line article here.

site visit

Last week I have been busy taking part in the AECB Certified Passivhaus Designer Course - and inevitably kept thinking about our Passivhaus Environment Centre. During last week the site made remarkable progress as ever - amongst other things, the cellulose fibre insulation has been injected into the roof and floor voids. Straw Works and the volunteers, who have been looking after every layer and corner of the render and plaster, were giving a final touch before they leave the site for two weeks at the end of today. Next week, the floor will be cleared to receive the air-tightness membrane. 

As many migrant birds fly over, I wonder whether they will recognise a new land mark in the reborn Lordship Recreation Ground!
Junko