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he Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has called on the industry to rethink the default setting of new build over reusing and refurbishing existing buildings, in its recent report. And where retrofi t isn’t possible, the EAC says that ‘effi cient’ low carbon building materials should be used.


Conservative MP Philip Dunne, EAC chair, said that Minister needed to “urgently” address the fact that signifi cant amounts of sequestered carbon are wasted when buildings are knocked down. He praised Michael Gove’s “pausing” of the demolition and rebuilding of the Marks & Spencer Oxford Street branch on “environmental grounds,” in the face of construction industry business imperatives.


He also says that “much more needs to be done,” including “baseline standards for action,” whatever that may be. However, calling for “mandatory whole-life carbon assessments, and targets to crack down on embodied carbon,” are clearer aims. Dunne believes contractors can then decide which ‘low-carbon materials’ they want to use, but the EAC wants the mandatory assessments in place by December 2023.


This all ties in with RIBA’s 2021 aim to move from a bias towards new build to one of reuse, as part of its 2030 Climate Challenge strategy. It feels like a paradox which also bolsters the credibility of a designers’ body making such pronouncements. This is because you’d perhaps assume architects would normally prefer to have control over an entire design vision from the ground up, rather than working with a previous designer’s concept.


Times have changed, and growing numbers of architects are embracing adaptive reuse and refurbishment as rich territory for realising interesting and harmonious concepts – working with previous responses to a building’s context but in a new light. Of course, the climate crisis has brought the need to prioritise reusing everything we can to the forefront, and buildings are one of the most obvious examples of where this be harnessed to make a major impact. With buildings being blamed for 25% of greenhouse gases, maybe avoiding the loss of stored carbon should be the overarching aim of all projects.


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Reusing existing buildings isn’t the panacea for low energy; refurbishments must be as rigorous as possible. Yet the Building Regulations framework on refurbs is opaque, only explicitly applying to additions to those existing buildings, and not to restored original parts. The much–reported upgrades to Parts L and F largely apply to new construction, for example, apart from aspects like U-values of new glazing introduced to existing buildings.


The Building Safety Act covers so much ground, in attempting to reduce the likelihood of another Grenfell, including an overhaul of aspects of the Building Regulations. However, another massive tranche of work is needed to tackle energy effi ciency regulation of refurbishing our existing stock, given that most of it will still be around in 2050 – ‘year zero’ for carbon emissions.


James Parker, Editor 07.22 ON THE COVER...


In a new district of Shenzhen in south east China, Rocco Design Architects has completed a performing arts centre which takes inspiration from the location’s coastal geography.


Cover image © Zang Chao Studio


BAO’AN PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE, SHENZHEN, CHINA


Part of a new cultural district of Shenzhen, Rocco Design Architects’ performing arts building is the development’s fl agship scheme, responding to coastal geography


ADF07_2022 Covers.indd 1 30/06/2022 09:34 For the full report on this project, go to page 32


FROM THE EDITOR


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ADF JULY 2022


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