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ON SITE WITH SYKES CHRISTOPHER SYKES I S A N A R C H I T E C T W H O T R A I N E D AT T H E B A R T L E T T S C H O O L O F A R C H I T E C T U R E AT U N I V E R S I T Y C O L L E G E LO N D O N . A F T E R H E Q U A L I F I E D , H E W O R K E D I N B O T H LO N D O N A N D S W E D E N . H AV I N G W I D E N E D H I S W R I T I N G A N D J O U R N A L I S T I C S K I L L S , H E S U B S E Q U E N T LY S TA R T E D H I S O W N P U B L I S H I N G C O M PA N Y S P E C I A L I S I N G I N B U I L D I N G M A G A Z I N E S A N D E V E N T S . A S A H O B B Y, H E U S E D T O W R I T E S I T C O M F O R T H E B B C .
Chimella chimney block in action
St John’s College Library – winner of the Schüco sustainability award. Designed by Wright & Wright Architects.
Image ©Hufton + Crow
SAVING ENERGY AND THE FUTURE
Competing for the future The recent Home of 2030 competition encouraged the best and brightest talents to design environmentally-friendly homes that support people in leading independent, fulfilling lives as our society ages. The reforms include our commitment to making tree-lined streets the norm and an ambition that new ‘zero-carbonready’ homes delivered under the new system will not require any future retrofitting. Among the six finalists are some well-known architects and design thinkers. +Home designed by igloo Regeneration with Useful Projects, Expedition Engineers and Mawson Kerr and Connector Housing designed by Openstudio with Hoare Lea, LDA Design and Gardiner & Theobald are the joint winners of the competition. The +Home scheme proposes community-led self-build homes that people can design themselves. Simple to build with affordable frames and components, the houses would be climate-friendly and recyclable at the end of their use. Connector Housing is a flexible and adaptable system for age-friendly, multi-generational housing and neighbourhoods. It proposes varying densities of houses and apartments, with a variety of site configurations, vertical heights, external appearances and internal layouts that can be adapted to respond to changing occupant needs. The winners and other shortlisted teams will now be invited to meet Homes England’s development partners to discuss their ideas further. Also worth noting are the Schüco Excellence Awards 2020, which include a sustainability award. This year, it is the library and study centre at St John’s College Oxford, designed by architect firm Wright & Wright. This targets net-zero carbon in a challenging Grade I Listed setting and features Schüco windows and rooflights.
Lockdown may have recently ended, but a lot is happening under the covers, and innovators are coming up with great ideas to meet the Government’s net-zero goals. The Climate Change Committee’s ambition is to have 5.5 million heat pumps, recognise hydrogen and decarbonise heat. Here are a few tasters of exciting developments and thoughts.
Innovations “What’s the best way to save energy?” a child might ask. “Keep the front door and windows closed,” might be the obvious answer. “What about the chimney?” comes the smart reply. So, it was at an exhibition a few years ago that we saw the first appearance of this upturned solution – the popular chimella. Interesting how this simple solution is diametrically opposed to the many energysaving innovations and research solutions which suddenly pop up these days and drive the task forward. A good example is the team that designed and built two lowFC&A – JANUARY – 2021
carbon buildings at Swansea University which generate their own energy. They have been proven to work at the university’s Bay Campus – which have been in operation for over two years. Both can generate and store enough solar energy to meet their own needs, with enough left over to charge up electric vehicles or share with other buildings. Now, a toolkit of the design principles that they used has been published. The aim is to encourage others to construct these ‘active buildings’, which would drastically cut the UK’s carbon footprint – currently, 40% of emissions which come from heating and powering our buildings. 20
