Things are changing…
Been listening to the news about climate change and feeling overwhelmed by the whole situation? For all of ScoMo’s current talk about net zero goals, it would feel much better to start taking whatever action you can.
The problem is that completely changing the way we live to reverse the damage already done to the planet is a monumental task. That’s a real bummer and the reason why feeling overwhelmed is a pretty normal response to climate change. We’re feeling it and we bet you are too.
Moving forward on climate action is something we can’t do alone – because it requires not only innovation, but also collaboration on a scale that has never been seen before. No biggy…
But things are changing.
This year we at Maytree – alongside many other architects – signed an Architect’s Declare commitment to take action towards sustainable design. There are 10 objectives we have agreed to work towards, and you can see them here.
Our first step was to up skill our team on the current tools, databases and methods available. Andy was already in the habit of doing this work every few years, and has been amazed to see the progress the industry has made since the last time he took a deep dive. And that rate of change is only going to continue to accelerate as the pressure for change mounts further.
To date, there have been some very achievable sustainable basics we can integrate into residential architecture. These include things like solar power or green energy, rainwater collection, passive design, good insulation and building sealing. As we move into the next decade, we are expanding this focus to include low embodied carbon products (there’s a link below that explains this concept in more detail).
If you’re genuinely interested in sustainable architecture, it’s important that you do educate yourself on its basic principles, so you can advocate for yourself during the design process. That’s because in a recent conversation we had with an energy-efficiency consultant, we were advised to put a ceiling fan in a patio for reasons we didn’t necessarily agree with. We were told that this move would give the project a concession, adding an extra star in the energy report. This approach of checking boxes for compliance is a very low bar – as a result, things like stars and ratings can be misleading about the true environmental credentials of a building.
Our hope is that over the next decade, we as designers will move away from the checkbox approach, and instead make the difficult changes necessary to create the type of world that we want the next generation to live in.
Our studio is committed to this work – and we hope you’ll join us on our journey as we share what we’re learning (the easiest way to do this is to sign up to our newsletter).
