Front-runner

Architype
With almost all of our projects being certified Passivhaus or EnerPHit, they are assessed for overheating using the Passivhaus Planning Package software (PHPP). This enables the use of future climate files, such as the 2080 Prometheus dataset. At Edwards Court, the first Passivhaus extra-care home in the UK, this approach resulted in the fixing points for future external shading to be fitted during its construction, to ease its adaptation to the future unknown climate.

The UEA Enterprise Centre used the university’s own climate data, with a range of design scenarios simulated in PHPP to identify the most robust solution over a 100-year period. Sensitivity analysis was carried out for both a warming and cooling scenario resulting in a thermally stable design. The non-mechanically cooled building is in fact often used as by university students as the go to place during a heatwave, as it’s significantly cooler than other spaces on campus.

Exploration Architecture
We address future climate and resilience on all projects by looking at the specifics of the location and what the best science predicts will be the likely conditions in 50- 100 years. Often we find design inspiration by studying adaptations in biology which show how certain organisms have evolved to thrive in extreme conditions such as high temperatures or extreme rainfall.

Bond Bryan Architects
Since 2023 Bond Bryan Architects has held dedicated environmental sustainability training days to educate staff on the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, fostering design strategies that consider future climatic scenarios and the need for project adaptability.

Bond Bryan Architects encourages accountability for future climatic scenarios and the need for resilience within projects, designing buildings
for flexibility with every building being adaptable for various future uses (short and long term), always considering end-of-life. Our Factory 2050 provides a reconfigurable circular shopfloor that can adapt to various prototyping and manufacturing processes.

We also explore alternative and innovative forms of construction, including MMC and hybrid solutions, to reduce carbon, minimise waste and encourage reuse of components. We are implementing our design approach to the design of our offices. The recently completed refurbishment of our Sheffield studio implemented circular and low-waste principles considering end-of-life scenarios, with features such as easily removable and recyclable carpets.

Marks Barfield Architects
Our projects are all approached through the lens of the planetary emergency. Initially, we undergo workshops with our clients and consultants to ensure they are aligned and understand the drivers behind our approach and have a shift in mindsets.

The projects are then interrogated and designed under a framework we have curated throughout the RIBA stages which looks at minimising embodied and operational carbon; urban mining and material reuse; biodiversity and urban greening; delivering social value; designing for climate adaptability and resilience; and considering end of life deconstruction and reuse scenarios.

Having curated a host and donor relationship within the practice, each project is not looked at in isolation but in relation to wider circular opportunities as a material bank. As a result of our work on the circular economy and 100% reuse project we identified the need for material banks and are advocating their establishment alongside deconstruction/demolition contractors.

Stanton Williams
We believe that delivering sustainable buildings is intrinsically linked to the creation of functional, healthy and efficient spaces that delight users and benefit wider communities. By applying the principles of ‘long life, loose fit’, we strive to create buildings that age well, are climate resilient, and can adapt to transformative change, promoting resource conservation.

Our designs adopt a fabric-first and passive approach that seeks to minimise the need for cooling in a changing climate, and that can minimise operational energy demand while providing fully integrated architectural solutions that deliver capital savings and are easy to operate. An example is the Eddington Key Worker Housing project in Cambridge, where the main structural frame has a 120- year design life, emphasising adaptability and longevity. This development also features one of the world’s largest stormwater management schemes, with rainwater collected from roofs and directed to attenuation ponds integrated into the landscape design.

Tate+Co
Our design process ensures future flexibility and climate resilience. We use PHPP as part of our assessment of operational energy in projects and this includes ensuring that overheating and future climate change are accounted for in the external envelope specification and design.

As part of our Regenerative Design process, we ensure our designs are adaptable. At York St John University Creative Centre we have laid out multiple future scenarios for the main teaching block. To support this, we designed a clear span structure with modular servicing.

We generally prioritise pre-fabricated ‘dry’ construction methods, normally timber frame and, if possible, reduce or remove concrete from our designs, using steel micropiles wherever we can. This means many of our delivered projects can be removed/disassembled/ substantially reused.

We are working with Airclad to create a demountable and reusable construction system to provide accommodation that can be re-used multiple times on many sites.

Optimised Environments (OPEN)
As multidisciplinary professionals who frequently have landscape architecture as a qualification, we have been highly aware of the mounting evidence of climate change and the corresponding repercussions for many years. Our practice is therefore critically attuned to addressing and mitigating these pressures, anticipating future forces and limits to capacity through resilient and flexible designs. This is most frequently demonstrated in our innovative approach to water, demonstrated through the design of flexible multi-functional spaces which not only hold and treat water, but also provide opportunities for increased biodiversity and interaction with people. These are resilient places which are designed to accommodate future scenarios without failing and endangering downstream people, habitats or infrastructure.

Our projects also demonstrate how habitats and species must be shaped to thrive in future climate conditions, considering how increases in temperature, extremes of water availability and increasing intensity of storms impact plant and animal habitats.

Perkins&Will
As part of a holistic approach we call ‘Living Design’, a resiliency risk assessment is conducted for each project. This deals with both short-term and long-term risks for the lifespan of the asset. These are separated into two main classes: environmental risks and human/societal risks. Each of the risks
is assessed on a three-point scale with the highest risks discussed with the client and actioned within our design response. Within these discussions, the adaptation of projects is considered, and each material is considered as a ‘layer’ in its own right, to ensure that materials are not unnecessarily wasted when elements of a project come to be replaced in future. Depending on the project this may mean design for disassembly, passporting or use class change scenarios as required.

We Made That
In 2022 we established a new partnership to support our environmental innovation. Funded by the Mayor of London as part of the Green New Deal, we’ve been working to develop, pilot and launch well-designed and innovative circular initiatives.

We were selected to gain specialist advisory support from ReLondon’s ‘Build Back Better’ support team to help identify circular opportunities that will have the greatest impact for our business and be a force for good through our projects.

We undertook a ‘circular business review’ with ReLondon to better identify where the most impactful and value- added opportunities are within both our and our partners’ workstreams. This enabled us to develop a mature understanding of circularity, and to refine the language and knowledge required to apply circular principles into advice in our projects.

In 2023, 100% of our projects were subject to internal reviews by our ‘climate champion’.

MATT+FIONA
Our meanwhile or youth build projects are always designed considering flexibility, adaptability and ways in which structures can be reconfigured to provide the greatest lifespan and legacy, some of which is unknown at the time of co-design. Working with young people means the needs of the next generation are always front and centre.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
As architects and designers, we see the need for resilience as intrinsically connected with community planning, design, and policy decisions. Our landscape and ecology team studies the impact of the severe effects of climate change, like wildfires in California and the West Coast of the United States, to develop design and policy guidelines for more resilient towns and buildings. Last year, we built the Angelus Novus Vault, a masonry installation in the gardens of Venice’s Palazzo Mora, to demonstrate new possibilities for self- balancing construction using a novel, mixed-reality construction approach to enhance traditional building methods, reduce time spent reading construction drawings and minimise construction waste.

In addition to developing greener methods for new construction, we also strongly believe in the adaptive reuse of our existing building stock. We’ve developed research to reimagine vacant office towers into residences by large vertical cutouts within the floors – creating ideal apartment layouts – and implementing more resilient materials and efficient mechanical systems.

Rock Townsend Architects
We worked with the Department of Education and Arup Engineers to research and generate a report on how to design climate resilient schools. Our college and school designs promote, in the first instance, passive cross ventilation approaches, climate resilient rainwater systems and the combination of architect and landscape to provide good educational environments even with notional increases in global temperatures. All our designs consider adaptability and flexibility of the buildings to enhance any future use. We do not as yet design buildings for disassembly.