Comment Articles

Joe Croft, head of environmental and sustainability at Overbury, examines a challenging environmental assessment method for higher education fit-outs. There is a real desire for environmental sustainability within the higher education sector. To address that, the SKA for higher education... View Article

Nigel Ostime from Hawkins\Brown gives his views on the barriers to quality in the planning and procurement process, and how they could be broken down. Architects will tell you there is intrin- sic value in good design. Quality is delivered... View Article

The launch of Herzog & de Meuron’s major new 58-storey apartment block in Canary Wharf, One Park Drive, was somewhat overshadowed by some fairly stark words on Brexit from Sir George Iacobescu, chairman of developer Canary Wharf Group. Speaking after... View Article

The concept of creating ‘generative spaces’ is leading to a significant evolution in the approach to healthcare design, according to Heather Fennimore of ergonomic design specialist Humanscale. Here she explains the thinking behind the idea. In 2003 forward-thinking American architect... View Article

While BREEAM has made significant progress in many areas of the built environment, it is struggling to have the same impact in healthcare. So is a new approach needed to incentivise sustainable design? Mott MacDonald’s UK healthcare lead Gordon Hudson... View Article

How ‘zero compromise’ do architects need to be when designing envelopes to the Passivhaus standard and are aesthetic, and other compromises necessary? Sarah Johnson reports on the challenges involved. The Passivhaus standard The Passivhaus standard is often seen as the... View Article

Senior landscape architect at Arup, Sally Armour discusses weaving health and resilience into our cities through green building envelopes. Increasingly, the human population is becoming more urbanised – and by the end of the century it is estimated that 7... View Article

Creating educational buildings with zero energy usage and carbon footprints is perfectly possible. So why aren’t we building more? Neil Smith of design firm UK Energy Partners shares his thoughts. There’s no doubt the way we design and construct buildings consumes... View Article

Teachers know schools best and their input can be vital during a redesign. Pellings partner Nicolas Maari argues for the benefits of encouraging teachers to have a say in the design of UK schools. The soaring demand for school places... View Article

The UK is finally embracing the opportunities of the build to rent sector in a bid to ease the widespread housing crisis. Norman Hayden provides a progress report. With a rapidly-growing population and people living longer, the pressure on housing... View Article

Norman Hayden calls on architect Chapman Taylor which has been on an international journey, starting at Scotland Yard. The Metropolitan Police headquarters at New Scotland Yard, central London is one of the most recognisable buildings in the country. With its... View Article

Why did you become an architect? It was almost by accident. I decided to enrol at the Architecture University in the Polytechnic of Milan after a brief conversation with a girlfriend from senior high school who was upset due to... View Article

Martin Townsend of BRE Global looks at the importance of building standards which reflect local needs across the globe, in order to share best practice and drive change. There is a rapidly growing appetite for rating methodologies that can be used... View Article

Autonomous vehicles and driverless cars are definitely coming our way, but what impact will they have on way we design public spaces? Rachel Skinner of WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff argues that they will have a positive effect. Autonomous vehicles will... View Article

Alan Yates, technical director, sustainability at BRE Global looks at how the BREEAM assessment method can assist architects in optimising building design, while keeping their clients happy too. The commercial property sector is a fiercely competitive and fast-changing environment where clients... View Article

Architect Alireza Ravanshad is the creator of Dandi Space, a whole new architectural approach to combining work and living space through smarter design. Here, he makes the case for challenging the traditional spatial divide between working life and home life.... View Article

The BRE’s James Fisher describes how commercial clients are seeing the need to analyse and improve the environmental impact of their buildings in use, to increase asset value. For many businesses, operating their buildings presents a major cost overhead, often... View Article

Andrew Tang of Pellings spells out the design lessons for secondary schools as they expand to meet the intake ‘bulge’. Having worked for the past 10 years, largely in the primary education sector, I have been involved with a number... View Article

Architects, contractors and suppliers to the brick industry gathered at Arup’s UK head office recently to hear how the quintessential British building material was seeing a resurgence in a range of urban regeneration projects in London and across the UK. The audience invited by... View Article

September 15, 2008 is a date Phil Waind, director of WG+P, will not forget in a hurry. As the global financial crisis bit hard, his fledgling practice hit what turned out to be its low point. “Lehman Brothers filed for... View Article