Part L 2021 has been introduced specifically as a stepping stone, intended to help people prepare for the Future Homes and Buildings Standards in 2025. Having a better understanding of learning curves, however, suggests that the benefit of any preparation is likely to be lost when people are left playing catch-up with the next change.
Read MoreThe future ain't what it used to be: Designing and constructing buildings for the long term
We're really only just getting to grips with these things, when they're an essential part of a lower carbon, less resource intensive future. If we don't do them, and do them quickly, what will remain for us to deal with? Maybe not nuclear waste, but what other costs - economic and social - might we have to bear? And for how long will we have to bear them?
Read MoreWhat billions can buy you in home renovations
In my former life employed in architectural practice, I once worked with a client who wanted a wine cellar below his newly remodelled kitchen. Jeff Bezos, it turns out, has had a similar sort of wine room installed in his mansion in Washington, D.C. That, however, is where any similarities end with the house in Cheshire that I worked on.
Read MoreHighlighting dangerous social housing conditions
Sadly, the extent to which people live in dangerous and unhealthy homes was not surprising. That apologies from landlords and housing providers were only forthcoming once a national television network had highlighted the issue was also not surprising.
Read MoreNew year, new blog subscription service
It looks like the most hackneyed writer’s trick you can imagine: restart a blogging habit on new year’s day and see how long it lasts for. In this case, however, appearances are deceiving.
Read MoreWhat are the 'right' technical qualifications for construction?
Talking to designers, specifiers, contractors, members of the public and the staff in builder’s merchants built my knowledge in a way that no qualification could. So we need to be careful when describing people as ‘qualified’ or ‘having no technical qualifications’.
Read MoreWhen construction marketing talks about reversing climate change
Glib suggestions that ‘specifying and installing product X’ could help to reverse climate change - could contribute to cooling a planet with more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than a human has ever experienced - really, really frustrate me.
Read MoreFly, you fools? The unbearable flightlessness of being
By not flying in 2019, I’m trying to make myself feel better about not pledging to go flightless next year. It’s either that or I try to copy Greta Thunberg. How much work could I get done on a two week catamaran journey across the Atlantic…?
Read MoreActions Speak Louder Than Words: How Do I Make a Difference?
We preserve our routines because it makes life easier, and because we don’t see the effect of inaction clearly enough. When it comes to expressing my own view, finding the voice is a start but it can’t be the whole thing. In which case: what’s next? What can I do differently?
Read MoreCreating a Dream Home: The Retrofit Dilemma
I never truly believed I had a shot at bidding for something offering so much potential. And I wasn’t really surprised that somebody could afford to pay at least 164% of the guide price and still turn it into a profit-making opportunity. Even so, the extent to which I didn’t stand chance was still rather demoralising.
Read MoreDiscovering Chicago
Almost any building you care to point to has its own story and identity. Whether it's an architect trying to get one over a competitor, an architect trying to outdo him or herself, or an architect responding to some social or physical constraint, there is personality in every pane of glass, every steel support, and every brick or block of limestone.
Read MoreDriving Up Quality: Are We Due an Emissions Scandal in New Homes?
Once the full extent of the VW scandal became clear, it was not uncommon to hear suggestions that the performance of buildings - and housing specifically - should be highlighted as a similar scandal in an effort to raise public awareness.
How outraged were people really, though?
Read MoreClimate Change Protests: Won’t Somebody Think of the Children?
We can all reel off topics we think should have been taught at school. Subjects that might have made finding our way in the world that little bit easier; that would have been more relevant to our everyday lives. Mortgage interest rates over quadratic equations, that kind of thing. Is it time building performance became one of those subjects?
Read MoreWhat I Think About When I Worry About Talking (4)
The optimism communicated by much of the book is infectious. Its compelling arguments for a brighter future almost help you to forget chapter one’s alarming summary of how it will take nothing less than significant action to avoid reaching a tipping point for the climate in 20 or 30 years.
Read MoreWhat I Think About When I Worry About Talking (3)
Why can’t I do that?
Maybe because I’m not interested in fine art and haven’t held a paintbrush since finishing a mediocre watercolour of an Italian villa for a school art exam when I was 14?
Why do I do this to myself?
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