AJ Climate Champions

Episode 61. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Joe Jack Williams.  In this episode, we turn our attention to the global south. Ana Belizário describes Brazil’s burgeoning mass timber movement, which includes notable exemplars such as the Children's Village School (in Tocantins in northern Brazil) which won the RIBA International Prize in 2018.  Many talented Brazilian architects are shif...

Episode 60. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Joe Jack Williams.  In this episode, we take a deep dive into building with timber. Haggart shares numerous tips for practices just getting started. Early engagement with the supply chain and getting the right engineer are essential. Efficient use of timber is essential, as is designing for longevity and adaptability by getting column grids...

Episode 59. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Joe Jack Williams.  On the eve of Cop30 in Brazil, Built by Nature European Networks Lead and ACAN co-founder Joe Giddings talks to the AJ about how to build responsibly with timber. Giddings takes a deep dive into Built by Nature's (BbN) five Principles for Responsible Timber Construction, which provide a holistic framework for building wit...

Episode 58. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Rachael Owens.  Material Cultures co-founder Summer Islam explains how a regional ‘materials matrix’ informs the design process. ‘We imagine the future, rather than working within the present,' says Islam, describing the approach of design and research consultancy Material Cultures. ‘We speculate on the potential for woodlands to produce cer...

Episode 57. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Rachael Owens.  Melissa Mean from community land trust WeCanMake explains how a community-led approach in Bristol is tackling the housing crisis. ‘What if the power and resources to make good homes were in the hands of our communities? What if you literally put the tools in people's hands to design and make your own homes?’ asks Mean. For ov...

Episode 56. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Rachael Owens.  Gbolade Design Studio’s Tara Gbolade shares insights from her new book, Changing the Game: How to be a sustainable and regenerative small practice. Gbolade champions the nimbleness of small practices that enables them to rapidly pivot toward a more regenerative future. Drawing from her own experience and through a series of s...

Episode 55. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Rachael Owens.  AJ Climate Champions’ latest series focuses on retrofit. Our guest today is Thom Brisco of Brisco Loran, who talks to us about Costa's Barbers, a live-work shopfront which triumphed in the Project under £500,000 category at the AJ Architecture Awards last week. Brisco describes the conversion of a former barbers in Battersea...

Episode 54. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Rachael Owens.  AJ Climate Champions latest series focuses on retrofit. Our guest today is IF_DO founder Sarah Castle, who explains that community engagement is not just asking people what they want, but what they can do. ‘It’s about giving people the power to change their environments and making them feel part of it,’ Castle explains in thi...

Episode 53. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Rachael Owens.  AJ Climate Champions is back, with a new series focusing on retrofit. Our guest today is Maria-Chiara Piccinelli, associate director and project lead on the London School of Economics’ Firoz Lalji Global Hub (FLGH). In the episode she explains how each building element requires one-to-one conversations to determine the best r...

Episode 52. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Joe Jack Williams.  To achieve replication at scale, Nicolas Coeckelberghs of Brussels-based BC Materials favours compressed earth blocks over rammed earth. ‘Our goal is to bring earthen construction from a niche to a growing market,’ says  Coeckelberghs. He likens this challenge to playing chess on multiple fronts, creating demand while sim...

Episode 51. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Joe Jack Williams.  Daniel views mud and waste as opportunities, not obstacles. He advocates an approach of ‘maximum optimism’, explaining that mud and waste enhance his designs. ‘I follow the materials; they do not follow me,’ he says. Sourcing materials primarily from within five miles of a site, Daniel describes how mud and waste can be t...

Episode 50. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Joe Jack Williams.  Carmody Groarke sustainability lead Sian Ricketts explains how architecture can adapt to the reality of finite resources and an abundance of waste. Ricketts says that architects should develop their intuition and new rules of thumb to design for a changing climate. Architecture needs to adapt to incorporate materials from...

Ep 49. Structural engineer David Watson describes the enduring appeal of brick and its underexploited superpower: reuse Brick has many advantages: durability, aesthetics, use as both envelope and structure, and the possibility of local (even artisanal) production. This last point differentiates it from steel and concrete, due to the Ordinary Portland Cement needed for concrete production. ‘We need...

Episode 48. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Joe Jack Williams. Structural engineer Eva MacNamara of Expedition Engineering explains how we can radically reduce our use of concrete and how to better understand the biodiversity impacts of material choices. In this episode, we dive into the tricky topic of concrete and unpick the widespread mantra that ‘concrete is bad’.  Concrete is ‘an...

For the first in a new six-part series on materials, Hattie is joined by co-host Joe Jack Williams to interview Martha Lewis, head of materials at Danish practice Henning Larsen. Lewis argues that a baseline of health and environmental impacts should inform material specification, and explains why a holistic approach is essential to navigate the nuances of material selection. She describes how the...

Episode 46. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and George Morgan. Andrew Waugh explains how building with timber can address industry transformation at scale. ‘I want to transform the whole industry,’ says Waugh, founding director of Waugh Thistleton which was recently named Practice of the Year at the AJ Architecture Awards. In this episode Waugh explains why tall buildings have no place in...

Episode 45. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and George Morgan. Two Public Practice associates explain how working in the public sector has increased their agency as designers. Public Practice is a social enterprise that places built environment professions in the public sector, primarily in place-making roles and increasingly in key roles that drive retrofit and net zero. ACAN co-founder...

Episode 44. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and George Morgan. Studio Weave founding director Je Ahn explains the challenges of sourcing timber from London’s streets and parks. He describes how he translated the ambition of using local timber from London’s trees into reality at Lea Bridge Library Pavilion despite the fact that no sales channel existed for sourcing local timber and the nee...

Ep 43. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and George Morgan. London Eye architect Julia Barfield explains how the climate emergency changed the way her practice, Marks Barfield, operates, as well as what’s ahead for the Architects Declare movement. Julia shares insights from recent projects on how to achieve circularity in retrofit, the challenges of stockpiling materials for reuse  and how...

Episode 42. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and George Morgan. Montreal-based architect and systems thinker Scott Francisco explains why architects must educate themselves to understand the nuances of timber sourcing. Francisco believes that greater use of timber in construction in coming decades will be essential to meet our climate targets. This in turn means an increase in plantation f...

Episode 41. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and George Morgan. In this episode, AJ100 Sustainability Champion and Architype associate director Ann-Marie Fallon discusses her belief that delivering net zero is not just technical – understanding how people use buildings and their role in the community is crucial. We also hear about Architype’s success in influencing policy changes in Scotla...

Bonus episode. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. During an Obel Award panel at the UIA conference in Copenhagen, Heringer seized the opportunity to ask the global audience for ‘forgiveness’ on behalf of architects of the global north. ‘I'm sorry for creating this … ideal of an architecture that was supposed to bring us a comfortable, safe and happy and healthy life, when in fact, it was ju...

Episode 40. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. In this episode, we explore the global phenomenon of shrinking villages in the countryside, hearing about a remarkable series of interventions in southeastern China by DnA_Design, a small Beijing practice.  Xu advocates a role change for architects in both rural and urban contexts. Architects should no longer accept a commission as given, but t...

Episode 38. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. Slade, head of historic building climate change adaptation at Historic England, explains why insulation is the area of highest risk. As a conservation-accredited building surveyor with deep interests in both the natural and built environment, Slade explains the role of Historic England as a statutory consultee in planning, in provision of techn...

Episode 38. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. In our second episode exploring how sustainability impacts heritage buildings, we speak to Procter-Rihl Architects’ Chris Procter, lead author of ACAN’s Climate Emergency Conservation Area Toolkit – England. Chris explains how conservation areas can streamline the consent process by developing a pattern book approach to building elements. Chris...