AJ Climate Champions

Episode 37. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. 5th Studio co-founder Oliver Smith shares his radical approach to upgrading listed buildings. He talks about the practice’s radical retrofit of New Court at Trinity College, Cambridge. Completed in 2016, New Court remains a trailblazing project because it pioneered an ambitious sustainability agenda in a Grade I-listed building using a nuanced...

Episode 36. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. In this episode, Pelsmakers argues that teaching values must be at the heart of architectural education. She believes students are bombarded with too much technical information on sustainability and that a strong grounding in architectural ethics is essential in order to apply technical knowledge for the best possible built environment and soci...

Episode 35. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. Environmental engineer Patrick Bellew of Atelier Ten shares insight from having worked on high-profile architectural projects, including the new Google HQ at King's Cross designed by Heatherwick Studio. He explains that post-pandemic ventilation rates in commercial offices have tripled with radiant solutions replacing blown air systems, and how...

Episode 34. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. Glasgow climate activist Scott McAulay and ACAN’s Rosie Murphy advocate for a curriculum which empowers students as changemakers. McAulay, founder of the virtual Anthropocene Architecture School, argues that the answer to every brief should not be a new building. Architects must rethink their role as stewards of the built environment rather tha...

Episode 33. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. Velux director of sustainable buildings Lone Feifer explains why ‘relative’ sustainability, improvement on previous standards, is no longer good enough. ‘One planet means one carbon budget with a fixed amount available for buildings,’ she says. It’s not about improving relative to previously accepted standards. Lone also describes how Denmark’s...

Episode 32. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. In this episode, we speak to Louisa Bowles - winner of this year’s AJ100 Sustainability Champion award - about Hawkins\Brown’s two-pronged approach to sustainability: reducing carbon emissions and enhancing society. Louisa explains that in order to avoid the ‘smoke and mirrors’ of carbon offsets, calling a project 'net zero' should increasingly...

Episide 31. The Manchester-based Jo Sharples and Jack Richards of Editional Studio share top tips from Decarbonise Your House Now!, a timely domestic retrofit guide they have put together for clients and architects. Each recommended retrofit measure is assessed in terms of ‘trigger points’ (if you’re doing X, consider Y) and ‘related opportunities’ (if you’re doing x, consider the optimal low carb...

Episide 30. Retrofit expert Bob Prewett describes how a client’s brief for an ‘extreme retrofit’ in 2008 gave him ‘something bigger than architecture to think about’. Divided between London and Wells, the ten-strong Prewett Bizley Architects has a portfolio of completed retrofit projects that achieve upwards of 70% energy savings and regularly monitors its buildings to understand how they operate...

Episode 29. We speak to architect and ACAN (Architects Climate Action Network) steering group coordinator Sara Edmonds who is jumpstarting widespread conversations around domestic retrofit. Reaching beyond the bounds of architecture, Studio seARCH co-founder and Passivhaus designer Sara Edmonds is engaged in inclusive conversations across the domestic retrofit space from the political to the pract...

Episode 28. Architect John Christophers shares lessons from a decade of monitoring his own home which generates 40 per cent more energy than it uses. We continue our focus on building performance and explore what one can glean from monitoring a small project. In 2013, John retrofitted and extended a two-up two-down Victorian terraced house in Birmingham’s Balsall Heath neighbourhood, adding Passiv...

Episode 27. We continue our focus on building performance; AHMM sustainability lead Craig Robertson shares important lessons from a building performance study of 2015 Stirling Prize-winning Burntwood School in southwest London. It is still much too rare for architects – and clients – to transparently share post-occupancy data, especially when it flags up a significant performance gap, so kudos to...

Episode 26. A year after publication, Judit Kimpian and Hattie Hartman revisit key messages from the book they co-authored with Sofie Pelsmakers. Judit explains why building performance studies de-risk the construction process and help ensure that what was designed actually gets built and operates as intended. She explains why it is so important to stay with a project during a one-to-three-year ‘l...

Episode 25. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. In this episode, we hear from structural engineer Hanif Kara who is working with leading architects on projects across the globe for ambitious clients with resources to deliver sustainable outcomes, including Google, Apple and British Land. Recent projects include Grafton’s Stirling-Prize winning Town House in Kingston, Grafton’s Marshall Build...

Episode 24. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. In this episode, Soane Medal (2021) winner Tabassum describes her approach as distilling the essence of vernacular buildings into contemporary architecture Working on the front line of climate change in the Ganges delta, Tabassum is developing flat pack bamboo homes to bolster marginal communities devastated by seasonal flooding.  ‘How relevant...

Episode 23. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. In this episode, we continue our focus on France, speaking to one of the country’s leading practitioners of ecological architecture. Over four decades, Philippe Madec has combined practice, teaching and writing. He has built extensively across France: housing, public buildings, and many urban design and masterplanning projects which feature abu...

Episode 22. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. New year, new horizons: Climate Champions is going abroad in search of fresh approaches to ecological architecture. This week we continue talking to French architect and natural materials expert Dominique Gauzin-Müller, who explains why hybrid use of materials is the way forward. We also speak to French structural engineer and ACAN member Frédé...

Episode 21. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. New year, new horizons: Climate Champions is going abroad in search of fresh approaches to ecological architecture. This week we talk to French architect and natural materials expert Dominique Gauzin-Müller about France’s growing ‘frugal’ architecture movement. She also shares with us research in ‘poured earth’ which she sees as an alternative...

Episode 20. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. As 2021 crawls to a close, Hattie Hartman converses with Design Museum chief curator Justin McGuirk about the exhibition Waste Age: What Can Design Do, on show until 22 February. And if you’re still wondering how your practice can tackle the climate emergency, Architects Declare steering group member Kat Scott reveals AD’s long-awaited Practice...

Episode 19. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. This week we continue our focus on reuse with a step-by-step approach to tagging the components of an existing building so that they can be dismantled and reused, just like Lego blocks. Hoolahan explains how she collaborated with a multidisciplinary team to develop an open source, design-led approach to material passports for retrofit, an initi...

Episode 18. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. Architect and academic Duncan Baker-Brown shares the latest developments in material reuse, including his proposal for a pavilion at Glyndebourne Opera, sourced from materials on the Glyndebourne estate and the surrounding Sussex weald. For show notes to this episode, go to www.architectsjournal.co.uk/podcasts

Episode 17. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. In this episode, we speak to Glasgow City Council architect Paola Pasino about her work with Danish architect Jan Gehl to create the framework for much that is happening in Glasgow today. Our second guest is ACAN’s Evelyn Choy, who talks to us about the exhibitions, events and social media storm the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) is h...

Ep 16. Continuing its focus on the international climate conference, AJ Climate Champions speaks to Becca Thomas of New Practice about activating a site just outside the COP26 secure zone as a destination for protesters, and Stephen O’Malley of Civic Engineers about redesigning the public realm of Glasgow city centre for active travel and resiliency. For show notes to this episode and to catch up...

The new RIBA president discusses his advocacy role at COP26, and the chair of the institute’s Sustainable Futures Group explains revisions to the 2030 Climate Challenge targets. As COP26 in Glasgow approaches in early November, AJ Climate Champions puts the spotlight on the RIBA’s recently released Built for the Environment report, a global call for governments to harness the built environment’s r...

Ep 14. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. Architect Sarah Featherstone and planner Jennifer Ross, both members of the all-female VeloCity team, describe their 21st-century strategy for the English countryside: less cars, more bikes and new housing in village clusters linked to rail stations. Ross explains why we desperately need a joined-up approach to spatial planning that focuses on villa...

Ep 13. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman. In our continuing series on landscape and the biodiversity crisis, we speak to rewilding pioneer Isabella Tree of the Knepp Estate in West Sussex, hailed as ‘one of the most exciting wildlife conservation projects in the UK.’ The conservationist and author explains why the proposed Buck Farm development – which goes before Horsham District Council t...