unless of course it is a taxpayers funded building and then it is the design teams ‘moral duty’ to ensure ratings of Excellant and Gold that can be advertised till kingdom come in the local rags, but all of the extra money required for the renewables etc is taken from the money available for a high quality design. So……….the building will never win any beauty pagents!

I belive the smaller Architectural firms are pushing the sustainability as far as they can, but they do need to earn a living. They will never win the £20,000 prizes to help subsidise the time spent on encouraging energy efficiency. Catch 22 in a nutshell!!!!

Richard Rogers points out that one of the best ways to make cities more sustainable is to increase their density. To do this you need to go high and there are two materials which allow you to do this; concrete and steel.

I agree with George’s architects’ comments about lifespan and we must also remember to factor in re-use or recylcling of building materials. Timber may be renewable but steel is recyclable.

Add those two in the equation for ‘how sustainable is our building’ and it does indeed get enormously complex.

However I do think that George makes a fair criticism to allege that some architects are guilty of using advances in materials technology to further creative expression before environmentally responsible design. Architecture should aim to delight but I believe that it is possible to achieve this whilst still meeting a sustainability agenda.

Good green building design has subtle effects ramifying the community and the landscape. For example timber framed buildings have the potential to stimulate the management of our undermanaged broadleaved woodlands and to improve the outlook for investment in (local) forestry. This would help reverse the decline in populations of plants and birds docuumented in recent English Nature and RSPB publications. The development of a sustainable timber resource would also produce woodfuel as a by-product. It would help stabilise local communities through the provision of employment and help us understand and appreciate our resources better.

There are undoubtedly down-sides to building in timber but what I want to know is, how can these be minimised by design and the sparing appropriate use of modern materials and treatments?

Some further thoughts on George Marshall from around the office.

Buildings are the single largest source of greenhouse gases. New legislation requires ever higher standards of insulation and energy efficiency in buildings. All UK architects work to these regulations and one of the biggest issues we face, particularly on smaller projects which account for the largest part of the construction industry, is finding skilled contractors who can build to the tolerances required by the new standards.

Mr Marshall appears to take issue with the use of concrete and steel ( presumably brick and block as well )in construction. I assume he would like to see everything constructed from timber which whilst supposedly available from renewable sources is incredibly difficult to verify and results in buildings of low thermal mass i.e. not temperature stable therefore they require systems to continually regulate their temperature. Timber buildings also have a shorter life span particularly as a lot of poor quality timer is used. Is it more energy efficient to build a house out of brick or concrete that will last 100′s of years requiring relatively little maintenance? I would argue that some of the best buildings we have had are Victorian warehouse’s incredibly adaptable and reusable.

The Bed Zed development in south London by architect Bill Dunster was heralded as the benchmark for sustainable living. Several years on it is being reported that parts of the scheme overheat to such an extent that they are uninhabitable during the summer months.

The exemplar low energy and solar housing built at Milton Keynes in the 80′s was actually demonstrated to use more energy than the ordinary housing that surrounded it.

The whole issue is enormously complex and there is in my view a lot of smoke and mirrors. It is almost impossible to support one argument as there is always a valid counter. In my view sensible low tech site responsive solutions are the answer. People understand how to live in the space and they don’t break as often.

George’s heart seems to be in the right place and who knows – his arguments may prove to be correct…

But I doubt such a shift will come from those who are already well established and set in their ways – rather I think there will be two major driving forces of change. The first, in the short-term, from a general shaping of informed understanding, and secondly, in the longer-term, sheer necessity by dint of more extreme climate change conditions.

The sizeable growth of informed practice amongst domestic and smaller scale commercial projects by architects, builders, buyer and sellers will inevitably have a knock-on impact on larger-scale projects. Ultimately it is the uptake by the prospectors/middle classes/the aspirational/educated – class as you will – who have the ability to drive the market to create momentum, sustain interest and ultimately in time influence the higher eschelons.

I witnessed this in Vienna in the late ’80′s – early ’90′s; of the public and media reaction to the work by the Austrian architect/philosopher/designer Hundertwasser. He designed sustainable housing for a Viennese Housing Association (named, with an eye to posterity, The Hundertwasser Haus), and on the back of the enormously positive public response it received, he then went onto work on various larger public projects. But most interestingly, it created an exceptionally well-informed chattering class who then started driving a market for sustainable domestic architecture and that in turn tipped into larger scale environmentally friendly commissions. (although the word ‘sustainable’ was not used then, that is very much modern terminology, nevertheless his work was hailed as green – grass roofs became immensely popular thereafter)

Hundertwasser’s work was of course very much of it’s time and place. It can look rather clumsy and naive today, and maybe it’s remarkable that he was so successful. Had he been based in the UK it is probable he would not have been supported and patronised to such an extent. Then again, he was a very driven man with a strong sense of mission to get people to recognise the necessity of respecting and working with rather than against nature. And it is testimony to his groundwork that ten years later in Vienna the first car-free housing complex was successfully completed. Some of your responses above suggest that this kind of spirit is indeed alive for some of our architects.

Legislation is also a great driver. The implementation of the compulsory Energy Performance Certificates for the forthcoming Home Information Packs due next June (and a timely Defra funded energy efficiency initiative), is a start. It will bring a correlating demand for houses to be more sustainable, and as mentioned by Sue Roaf above, Johnson forecasts falling prices for energy inefficient buildings. Look how people move fast to implement more sustainable solutions if they believe they will lose out financially on property. It can only be that this will in turn influence architects on a wider scale as it becomes common language to ask ‘but how sustainable is this building, and exactly in what way has this been addressed?’

Home Packs and likewise the 10% Merton Rule /Part L of the Building Regs is but a small step in the right direction. At the end of the day, 10% renewable technology tacked on is never going to be enough. More stringent legislation is necessary – and soon (after all, legislation can take years to be implemented, especially if all those with vested interest to deter enter the fray). I had an interesting conversation (about the need to just get on and legislate, rather than wasting time with voluntary Building codes and yet more consultations on how to change behaviour) with someone from Defra recently who claimed that it would be wrong to take away the ‘basic human right to choice’. That must be a labour spin on the Human Rights Act.

The door of necessity is closing rapidly on us. Although I doubt WW2 rationing was held back for ‘right to choice’, I can hear the words spoken today …. “The thing is Prime Minister, we think we should give people the right to choose…” Choose what? Polluting and unsustainable practices? Environmental damage? The ability to survive when oil prices go through the roof? The problem with presenting choice is it implies knowledge of the alternatives – and acceptance that the each option proffered is an acceptable choice.

Hundertwasser wrote about our Duty to (the) Tree. He called for a Peace Treaty with Nature. For him, politics, art and architecture were inextricably intertwined. Too many of our modern-day cathedral builders are too cowardly to stand tall and be political in their creations.

There are a very few of us promoting social and environmental responsibility (which is how I met my first wife), and I did a PhD in the area of Community Design in housing. There is an exceptional organisation called Architects and Engineers for Social Responsibility, that actually sent a delegate to the Climate and Energy UNED-UK working group in the run-up to the 2002 UN World Summit.

But by and large we go unheard and my PhD unread.

I went to a recent lecture by Zaha Hadid at the AA School of Architecture, and was shocked that all the students around me were totally enraptured over what she was saying about her grossly profligate use of concrete, and no one of any age questioned her about environmental impacts at all (I was in a basement overflow room).

A welcome but very occasional article appeared in The Guardian on Sat 14 October, on the imminent Stirling Prize, entitled ‘The truth about those iconic buildings ..’ but it was chiefly concerned about their ‘…roofs leak, they’re dingy and too hot’, not their environmental profligacy.

As a member of the AA, I have just put in a call to the PA for the new Director at the AA School, to request a debate on the environmental profligacy of star architects, and await a reply, with great interest!