Environmental & Sustainability Policy

The Practice has adopted an Environmental Policy to maintain its position at the forefront of environmentally conscious design and bring best current thinking and practice to its projects.  Limiting climate change is without doubt the most serious and pressing challenge that mankind has so far had to face. The Practice understands the importance of good environmental governance and is committed to creating spaces that are healthy, economically viable and sensitive to social needs.

All buildings we design should be:

• Energy-efficient and ecologically sensitive — bound to the idea and practice of sustainability;
• The result of full collaboration between the design team and the client including where possible those who will use and those who will manage the building;
• In close integration with their context

We believe the above objectives are fundamental.

In designing we aim to:

• Maximise the benefits of natural environmental systems by siting and design;
• At the outset, establish an overall site strategy that promotes/sustains biodiversity;
• Minimise environmental impact as far as possible;
• Reduce the overall energy consumption of buildings (both in construction and life cycle in use within the available budget) and minimise carbon dioxide emissions;
• Agree with client at early stage energy targets to work to. We believe life cycle and whole life costing must be a principal part of design and maintenance considerations;
• Review comfort criteria for buildings with a view to minimising energy consumption
• Use materials and systems that are benign in terms of environmental impact, non-damaging to the health of users and frugal in terms of use of finite resources.
• Re-use and recycling is to be encouraged, disposal avoided.
• Targets for materials of low embodied energy to be negotiated at early stage of the detailed design.
• Use renewable materials and renewable energy resources wherever appropriate
• Set guidelines/targets for construction processes so that energy consumption can be minimised.
• The export of waste materials, in particular, excavated material, to be minimised and methods to achieve this at both design and construction phases demonstrated.
• To assist the client and design team in decision making we encourage the use of environmental assessment tools such as BREEAM.
• We will assess the design and specification of every project in terms of sustainability and environmental impact.
• We will set annual targets to continually improve the results of our asessments.