Retrofit housing
Sustainability in a post-Covid world Architects often talk about retrofitting and improving existing buildings, but, asks Anthony Cooper, are we applying our efforts wisely, or do we need to think bigger?
© Anthony Cooper
WORDS ANTHONY COOPER
By way of introduction, I design carbon-positive homes for clients (where carbon is stored in the materials used for construction). I work primarily for well-off clients who are often less interested in a low-carbon environment and tend to look to offsite manufacture for quality and assurance of price. That said, I have always maintained a keen interest in retrofitting existing houses. I occasionally dabble in the ‘additions and alterations’ market and I am certainly not divorced from its consequences. Central to my thought process is that we are not going to retrofit houses without government incentives: the lower down the economic ladder you are, the more likely it is that your home was poorly designed or constructed; compounded by the fact that this applies equally to new-build houses. Typical retrofits are essentially perverse, offering up short-term solutions that can often do more harm than good. I once asked Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud what he’d suggest when it came to retrofitting old housing stock. He replied without blinking, ‘Curtains. Heavy curtains.’ Although he had offered a succinct answer and one that was refreshingly simple, it seemed to over-simplify the problem. Schemes to upgrade housing stock are
typically aimed at the elderly or economically deprived. Looking at the socio-economic standing of people may well be a good place to start but retrofitting needs to encompass everyone. One thing is for certain, we are not going to control nor change the minds of those who want their radiators turned up to tropical, or those who scoff at people who do. We live in a time of opposites and pointing fingers at one another will only polarise society even more. Just think of Brexit or the current 2020 US presidential elections. And what about the role of the architect in this debate? We always look to upgrade the envelope of the home or add technology as an intelligent solution. These are, if done correctly,
“We should ensure our energy systems and devices are ‘plug and play’”
fantastic ways to upgrade our building stock. That said, this affects only a very small percentage of properties and is relatively meaningless when looking at climate change as a whole.
Part of the problem
When you see the word retrofit, I challenge you to look at it in terms of infrastructure. What we can do now and what will be possible in the future. We are already in a state of flux when it comes to climate change, and we can exploit the already world-changing Covid-19 pandemic to help refocus the national debate on a bold solution, one we can all get behind: legislation, not grants and incentivised schemes. We, as architects, need to accept that we are part of the problem. We wrap clients’ homes in airtight polymer shells, and enable the installation of the cheapest heating and ventilation systems because of cost-engineering or budgetary constraints and then wash our hands of the issue. We’ve had too many years of badly designed retrofits and new-builds creating unhealthy working and living conditions and the health of the occupants is not often considered an essential part of the solution. We need to be humble and to listen and learn: we are not ideally placed to lead. Although
Cambridge Architecture 7
