Sustainability – an intelligent balance
Environmental performance and the improvement of construction methods have formed a central part of the architectural experience of Cartwright Pickard’s founding directors and that of the practice.
The £56 million headquarters and training building for the Health and Safety Executive in Merseyside is built to BREEAM Excellent standards, has won a British Council for Offices Award and is cited as an exemplar by CABE. The Phoenix Gas headquarters in Belfast – built to a very tight budget reflecting the city’s modest rents – meets the BREEAM Very Good standard and also won a British Council for Offices award.
The starting point for achieving sustainability is to exploit the potential of natural ventilation and daylight whilst minimising solar gain to avoid the need for artificial cooling.
Orientation of a building is a fundamental issue as solar gains can account for 50% of the total cooling load of office buildings. We also look to reduce the embodied energy in every building. For example, pre-cast floors can have half the weight of concrete of an in-situ floor for the same span. On the other hand the lifetime benefit derived from the thermal mass of concrete in a building, in terms of its ability to modulate energy consumption for heating or cooling, can far outweigh the embodied carbon emissions in its creation. An intelligent balance has to be struck.