Designing the future - sustainable design and why it matters

As Design Director at Benoy, I head up the UK programme of work within the business. As a team, we specialise in mixed-use residential schemes and town centre regeneration, which increasingly involves looking at how we adapt and repurpose existing buildings, rather than simply knocking them down. For me, this is one of main sustainability drivers in urban design and development right now. 

From a cost and environmental perspective, the​‘demolish and rebuild’ model is often no longer viable. There’s growing consensus that we need to think about adapting what we already have through changes in use, form and function. The most recent IPCC report makes a strong case for​‘adapt and reuse’ as the most sustainable way forward, pointing out that the issue of embodied carbon and the overall impact of new buildings presents a major obstacle to meeting global net zero targets. For instance, the planned demolition of M&S’s flagship store in London was set to release 40,000 tonnes of CO₂, before the project was halted in 2022 by the UK Government. There are also reputational factors at play. Major brands are increasingly worried about consumer censure and the potential impact on revenue, meaning they’re more likely to engage with sustainable design solutions. 

Sustainable design is about ensuring the longevity of where we live, work and socialise. It’s about creating spaces where people want to be. Post covid, people are commuting less and spending more time in their local community, which is increasing the focus on healthy living and wellbeing in our design thinking. As a result, developers are becoming more engaged with how the built environment can support this shift through parks and greenspace, through indoor and outdoor amenity spaces, and through more blended lifestyles where living, working and socialising can happen together. 

There’s obviously a strong focus on building performance, and as architects we’re always looking at passive measures to help minimise the environmental impact of our designs. For example, where we position our buildings on site to maximise daylight, or reduce exposure to wind, noise and inclement weather. We’re getting smarter at adapting our façades to these conditions, and minimising the need for mechanical air conditioning through improved airflows and ventilation. There’s definitely been an evolution towards more natural ways of doing things, which has been helped by stronger planning and environmental policies from the likes of the GLA in London. The recent switch from gas boilers to air-source heat pumps is a case in point.

In addition to the social and environmental dimensions, there’s also the financial side of things. More and more banks and investors have an ESG agenda. They want to know their money’s not going to be used on projects that will have a detrimental impact on the world, which I think further pushes the sustainability agenda for architects. At the same time, due to interest rates and inflation most UK developments are now 25% more expensive to build, but unfortunately that’s not being reflected in the planning process. We need more concessions towards things like affordable housing to ensure the fiscal environment doesn’t have a negative social impact.

Through our in-house tech capabilities, we now have access to software that’s increasing our understanding of building layout and functionality. Programs like Grasshopper and Ladybug, alongside PowerBi and Climate Studio make the assessment process much more powerful and efficient. The systems we use enable us to model different scenarios and present these options to clients and the wider community in a truly dynamic way. We can, for instance, explore the positioning of a balcony and what this might mean in terms of solar gain and shading versus overheating. And we can assess very precisely the efficiencies that can be achieved through minor design adjustments.

Elsewhere, we’re seeing innovations in building materials and the information that’s available regarding embodied energy, recycled content and provenance, which helps us make really informed decisions about sustainability. Similarly, the industry’s getting much smarter about how it uses glass. We’re certainly seeing less of those big glassy façades that overheat or require huge amounts of cooling. So overall, design intelligence is getting better, and architects now have the tools and information to make a major positive impact in sustainable urban design.

Sustainability used to be talked about as an add-on, with developers putting a few PV panels on a roof and thinking they’d done their bit. But today, it’s a much more integrated part of the process.

We have a lot of international projects at Benoy. One of the core responsibilities of our internal Sustainability Group, which I co-run, is to ensure that the advanced sustainability knowledge we have here in the UK is shared across the other geographies in which we operate. Our teams in the Middle East, for instance, are equipped to really push the sustainability agenda to clients and help build a heightened awareness there. We also conduct regular design reviews across our global projects to ensure sustainability is being embedded in everything we do.

As a result of these efforts, discussions about sustainability are happening much earlier on in the planning process, and clients are keen to engage with the subject from the outset. Increasingly, people also seem to understand the vital connection between social and environmental wellbeing – to understand that buildings don’t just need to perform well in terms of energy efficiency, but have to support people’s mental and physical health as well.

Our town centre regeneration schemes are good examples of sustainable design in action. Our Victoria Square Woking project, for example, which we’ve just finished, involved putting multiple new uses and services into a town centre that weren’t there before – a new library, dance school and significantly extended retail space, for instance, as well as 550 build-to-rent residential apartments. Through vibrant new public realm and two town squares, we’ve managed to create an exciting new destination that’s keeping people invested in Woking and wanting to live and work there. Major retailers that were due to leave have stayed, which means we’ve helped to prevent out-of-town development and reduce car use in the town centre itself. It’s a really positive story and a clear demonstration of how sustainable design is essentially about the long-term future of our communities.