Alex Ely discusses how and why environmental issues have come to underpin the practice’s approach to design, materiality and construction.
Located in the heart of Southwark, London, Mæ is an award-winning practice specialising in housing, health and care, and social infrastructure projects. Founded in 2001 by Alex Ely, the office’s guiding design principles revolve around social inclusivity, spatial inventiveness, and sustainability. The latter is particularly important to the team, whose ambition is to produce exemplary buildings that not only support the circular economy but also further environmental understanding and know-how. Research, application, evaluation and dissemination are central to this approach – undertakings that extend to and inform material selection, as Ely explains.
How do you organise and manage the library?
The library is essentially a legacy of materials that we like and may want to reuse, organised by material palettes or types. We also have project boxes, which tend to reside with their respective design teams and contain a mix of different project-specific items. Alongside this, our landlord and neighbour Allies and Morrison has kindly extended us the use of their library which is located in the basement of this building. It’s rather better managed than ours and the intention is that we will be able to contribute to it over time.
The practice’s Mæ Zero team, which is responsible for researching and identifying products and materials, as well as developing technical solutions and details to help us deliver circular and zero carbon buildings, manages the library, Added to this, each design team makes its own contribution to material research. The aim is create exemplar buildings in terms of sustainability and circularity.
Acoustic board from Troldtekt. “This biodegradable acoustic board was specified for the ceilings at the Sands End Arts & Community Centre in London. It was left fair faced, in common with many of the other internal finishes, as a means of minimising the amount of extraneous materials that are typically added to construction projects.”
How do you share knowledge learned in this area?
The practice has technical reviews that ensure learning is shared between projects. It’s really important that we don’t end up in silos; we want a cross pollination of ideas, thinking, and knowledge between projects and teams. And if we do find something that we think is important, or a particularly good product, we try to make sure that it is taken forward into future projects where its use and design language can be further refined.
When and how do you focus on material selection during design projects?
Ideally, we focus on material selection as early as possible. The practice often undertakes studies for clients at Stage 1, assessing the viability of Modern Methods of Construction, including prefabricated modules and panelised building elements, which can steer projects in a certain direction. Our initial thinking also centres on how we can use the least amount of materials necessary to achieve our design and structural objectives. This goes hand-in-hand with specifying materials and building systems that are environmentally responsible.
Hempcrete from IsoHemp. “We are planning to use this highly sustainable and renewable material as an insulant on a residential project in Lewes, East Sussex, for Human Nature. It will form part of a timber-based wall cassette system.”
We demolish around 50,000 buildings each year in Britain, which accounts for more than 60 per cent of our nation’s waste. The trouble is, resources are limited and the only regenerative materials are timber, hemp, straw, bamboo, and mycelium, the vegetative stage of mushrooms, that is being used to make insulation and acoustic boards. Most construction products are single use, so if we can develop a stronger economy based around circularity, materials will have a much longer life.
Mæ is currently working on the Meridian Water masterplan for the London Borough of Enfield. Here, the council’s sustainability facilitator, Rafe Bertram, has set up what’s called an Excess Materials Exchange, which stockpiles building components – for potential reuse – from demolished buildings on the 82 hectare redevelopment site.
I believe it’s going to become a model for how to develop a circular economy, and the practice is interested in using this type of resource on its own projects. Saying that, you and your client have to be comfortable with a certain level of unpredictability when specifying materials in this way. I think that refurbishment and retrofit are increasingly becoming part of the early ‘equation’ when it comes to deciding whether to demolish or replace existing buildings. Working with what we already have, rather than starting afresh every time, makes sense and is how we should be approaching construction projects.
CLT wall panel from KLH. “CLT was used to form the superstructure of the John Morden Centre at Morden College in London. Once again, we opted for a fair-faced finish, but stained the timber a wonderful green tone at low level to subtly articulate the interior surface of the walls and extend their robustness by concealing marks and scuffs. A crisp rebate in the surface of each panel neatly delineates the stained section from the natural finish above.”
How do you go about comparing and researching materials in terms of their environmental credentials and performance?
If I’m honest, we are still trying to refine our understanding and processes for selecting the lowest carbon approach. At Stage 2, we will typically measure form factor and undertake some high-level carbon measuring using the FCBS CARBON tool and others developed by some of the larger architectural practices. Often at Stage 3 it’s a case of preparing more detailed analysis and modelling – in collaboration with engineers and sustainability consultants – to measure the carbon efficiency of the building.
To some extent you have to make assumptions at the early stages and go with what you believe to be the best option. Then, it’s about trying to find a balance between embodied carbon, which is your choice of materials, and operational carbon, which is the building in use. We are only just starting the journey of properly measuring, analysing and declaring the environmental performance of our buildings. As an industry we need to be open and transparent about this so we can improve and work better together.
Marmoleum flooring from Forbo. “We try to specify marmoleum (linoleum) over vinyl flooring in the common/shared areas of our residential schemes for environmental reasons. This high-quality, good-looking product is made from more than 90 per cent natural raw materials and contains around 40 per cent recycled content.”
So, would you say sustainability rather than contextuality is the overriding factor when it comes to material choice?
I think that it is becoming more so, although we are still interested in the quality of the material itself. That’s why a lot of our materials use brick as an external finish, because that’s the fabric of London. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t use upcycled bricks or brick products containing recycled content. It’s a balance between trying to find more innovative materials while still achieving a familiar and traditional aesthetic.
We generally start our projects by conducting detailed analysis and observations of the local context; we’re interested in designing buildings that complement and feel comfortable in their surroundings. Ideas about form and orientation aimed at reducing operational carbon might be the initial drivers. Then, if we are choosing brick we’ll try to find something that works tonally in its setting, without copying what’s already there. My concern is that the problems we are facing as an industry, and in environmental terms, need more innovative and original site-specific responses, rather than just referencing the context, which was designed for a different era and different climate. I think that we can be sensitive to the setting we are designing in, while still trying to find solutions that better suit today’s challenges.
Glazed brick by Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum. “The practice originally settled on the idea of a traditional glazed brick for The Chimes later living development in London. However, we wanted to achieve a rich haptic quality, so worked with Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum using hand thrown bricks. The uneven surface of the brick means that the intensity and colour of the glaze varies across its surface, giving the façade a delicate shimmering quality.”
Are there specific materials that the practice is drawn towards?
As I mentioned earlier, we tend to specify brick frequently as we generally build in London, However, the practice enjoys finding new ways of expressing it. On The Chimes later living scheme in Westminster, we worked with Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum to develop a glazed hand-thrown brick, which unlike traditional smooth-faced products, provides a huge variation of colour and texture across its surface. We are also starting to use brick products from StoneCycling, which combine clay with aggregates from crushed construction waste, such as discarded sanitaryware. The result is a beautiful textured brick that comes in a wide range of colours.
The practice used this product at the Sands End Arts & Community Centre in Fulham, where it saved 28 tonnes of waste that would otherwise have gone to landfill. We are trying to make brick specification choices that reduce carbon, and fortunately more manufacturers are helping to support this. Alongside StoneCycling’s WasteBasedBrick, there is also the K-BRIQ from Kenoteq, which is made from nearly 100 per cent recycled content and does not require kiln firing during manufacture with five per cent of the carbon footprint of a traditional clay brick. We particularly like the company’s striking blue K-BRIQ, which incorporates recycled pigments.
CLT is another material that we are drawn towards, but can’t always use, as much of our work is in the housing sector. However, we have been specifying it on our social infrastructure projects, such as the recently completed John Morden Centre at Morden College in Black heath, and the Sands End Arts & Community Centre in Fulham.
Cemsix B5 cement board corrugated roof sheeting. “We specified this thin yet strong corrugated roofing sheet for Sands End Arts & Community Centre in London. While it is perhaps not the most environmentally-friendly material, it is nevertheless very efficient and it satisfied our requirement for something that was low-cost and had an industrial aesthetic.”
What is the main attraction with CLT?
In part, it’s because CLT is a regenerative material, but there’s also something quite literal about it in construction terms – rather like the way we make architectural models. Added to this, it can be used with a fair-faced finish internally and has a wonderful texture. Speed and quality of construction, combined with reductions in waste and site transportation, provide further advantages over other materials.
Are there any other new or innovative materials that you’ve got your eye on?
We would love to use StoneCycling’s new BioBased Tile, which employs bacteria in the form of a binding agent to make the product three times stronger and 20 per cent lighter than concrete. It also has lower CO2 emissions than traditional cement. Kvadrat now supplies a wallboard made from recycled denim, which we would like to specify. There is Hempcrete insulation that we are hoping to use as part of a timber cassette system on a highly sustainable residential project in Lewes.
WasteBasedBrick from StoneCycling. “Made from at least 60 per cent waste, we used a lovely honey-coloured version of this innovative brick on the Sands End Arts & Community Centre in London. It was laid on edge for two reasons: first it doesn’t have a frog, and second this provided a larger surface, which counteracted the higher-than-normal price of the product – an important factor given the project’s tight budget.”
Do you work closely with manufacturers and craftspeople in terms of material research and specification?
It’s really important that materials from the project boxes are returned to the library for reasons of continuity. Materials that have achieved their objective in terms of sustainability or contributing to our design language can then be shared, and if necessary reused again, rather than the practice having to go through the whole process of discovery again. However, it can be easy to lose track of materials as some ‘live’ projects run for a long time.
How do you minimise waste?
It’s an ongoing problem. Large items, such as brick panels, get sent back to the brick factory so they can be reused. We also try to minimise the number of material samples that come into the practice by utilising our digital library as a starting point. This also holds much of our manufacturer and product literature, which saves both space and paper. We don’t need a physical sample of every material, although it’s good to be able see and touch products when you are trying to work out what goes with what. It may seem obvious, but in the first instance we always try to check whether a material sample already exists in the library before ordering another one!
K-BRIQ from Kenoteq. “Made from inert recycled materials, these highly sustainable bricks do not require firing and are said to contain less than five per cent of the carbon footprint of traditional clay bricks. We are hoping to use the product on several new schemes, which are currently at the pre-planning stage.”
How often do you review the library?
We reviewed it last Summer, when we moved, and ended up sending lots of bricks and masonry samples back to their respective manufacturers. Unfortunately, a fair amount of material also went into a skip for recycling. It’s a tough one, because the samples generally aren’t big enough to use in a project. Equally, material exchanges need a certain volume of the same material, which again we can’t provide.
Lastly, do you organise factory visits and CPDs?
Factory visits tend to be related to specific projects, such as working with Techcrete on the Sugar House Island project, or Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum on The Chimes. Our Mæ Zero team organises and manages regular CPDs, which are either in-house or online. These may also be requested by project teams working with specific materials that are central to their projects, and of potential interest to the wider practice. We’ve got Kenoteq coming in soon to speak about the K-BRIQ.
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