Webinar: Who are we designing for, and how do our buildings support their futures?

 

‘Addressing sustainability isn’t just about how we build, it’s about how long we build for,’ said Jan-Carlos Kucharek, opening RIBAJ Spec’s sustainability webinar. Citing Victor Kossakovsky’s 2024 film Architecton, where ancient ruins juxtapose with concrete in a musing on longevity and destruction, Kucharek reiterated: ‘Design isn’t only about performance, it’s about endurance and purpose.’ 

That sentiment framed a discussion that went beyond familiar topics to examine intersections between environmental sustainability and socioeconomic and health-based concerns. It championed a more holistic understanding of sustainability which asks: who are we designing for, and how do our buildings support their futures?

‘Concrete is the most consumed material on the planet, with implications that hang in the air like its dust,’ noted Kucharek. The issue of air quality was one of many raised by Dr Marcella Ucci of UCL’s Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources. 

Studies show, for instance, that high levels of indoor PM2.5 (particulate matter) impair memory and attention, while adequate filtration can reverse these effects. From indoor air quality and biophilic design to spatial layouts that encourage physical activity, design impacts cognition, productivity, and quality of life.

'Energy choices are a matter of social justice’

Acoustic comfort also fits this category. Oscar Acoustics’ Innovation Centre, rated A+ EPC, shows how healthy, sustainable workplaces need not skimp on originality. ‘I went completely over the top,’ said Ben Hancock, describing a characterful office saturated in the firm’s recycled paper-based acoustic finishes, which also act as efficient thermal insulators and conform to BREEAM, LEED, and WELL standards. Projects and products like these demonstrate that health, environmental and aesthetic goals need not be competing priorities.

‘Healthy buildings aren’t a luxury; they’re key to a sustainable future,’ Ucci added, stating a position shared by such organisations as the WHO and the World Green Building Council. And ‘designers are agents of public health, whether they realise it or not’. 

Inadequate insulation; mould exposure; obesogenic urban design – all carry social consequences. And ‘pollution disproportionately harms the poor’, Ucci explained, ‘making energy choices a matter of social justice’. Sustainable, healthy built environments are linked with achieving equity in populations. If this is neglected,  built environments perpetuate conditions that ‘are not just inequalities but injustices’.

Positive social values are evident in the Knights Park housing development in Eddington, Cambridge. A joint project of Pollard Thomas Edwards and Alison Brooks Architects, it delivered 249 homes with flexible layouts, robust insulation and strong placemaking. ‘We were able to do quite a lot here because it’s Cambridge,’ admitted Alexis Butterfield, noting the area’s higher affordability threshold and the nature of the client. Still, ‘Cambridge let us test ideas – and now they’re scaling beyond’.

The homes have 500mm-thick walls with 300mm insulation, timber roofs and structures to cut embodied carbon, plus terraces and split levels to maximise light and aspect. ‘The mews houses make the streets car free and community focused,’ said Michael Müller. Above-ground space focuses on people and biodiversity, with swales not just acting as drainage but as landscape features. The project’s identity stems from ‘true collaboration: swapping models, sharing pens from day one’, architects said.

The scheme also mitigated brick’s high embodied carbon via the buildings’ energy performance. Brick is used in above 80 per cent of new homes. ‘Bricks are not the problem; how we make them is,’ noted Sarah McGrady, group innovation and sustainability director at Michelmersh. The firm, which makes 125 million bricks annually, has slashed emissions by 47 per cent since 2003 and led a hydrogen-firing trial that cut firing emissions by up to 84 per cent. ‘There’s no one-size-fits-all solution,’ McGrady said. ‘Each site needs its own roadmap.'

Initiatives include renewables, circular production, and sugar cane-based packaging. Although challenges remain – including limited hydrogen availability and electric kiln tech still in infancy – Michelmersh is committed to publishing factory-specific EPDs to help architects specify based on carbon data.

Transparency was also central to the message of Kathy Ramsbottom, from Thrislington Cubicles. ‘If we can’t measure it, we can’t fix it,’ she said, regarding LCAs and EPDs, stressing their importance for accountability. 

Ramsbottom pushed for scrutiny of such greenwashed materials as bamboo, which often has more embodied carbon than assumed. She cited the firm’s tough supply chain procedures, cradle to gate/grave/cradle reuse projects, take-back packaging schemes, and FSC-certified materials as more genuinely sustainable. She also emphasised the need to eschew passing trends in favour of ‘building qualitatively’. 

‘We’re not telling architects to stop expressing themselves,’ she said, ‘as long as they are happy with that design for the next 15 years’ because the ironmongery is built to last. Fit for purpose comes first.

Building 'better, leaner and smarter'

dRMM’s project WorkStack, a light industrial building in Charlton Riverside for the Greenwich Enterprise Board, brings us full circle here. ‘It’s not just about less carbon, it’s about smarter space,’ said dRMM’s Steve Wallis. 

Composed of stacked, cantilevered CLT volumes on a steel base (‘we imagined a kind of log stack’) it achieved a 65 per cent embodied carbon reduction (271kgCO₂/m² upfront) and an A-rating under LETI guidelines. Its exposed timber, passive ventilation and minimal finishes underscore a fabric-first approach. ‘We left the CLT exposed,’ Wallis said. ‘Why hide what’s doing the hard work?’ 

Yet WorkStack is also a social strategy, delivering 428 jobs per hectare. ‘We wanted to build something that feels industrial, but does things better, leaner and smarter,’ Wallis added.

The message was consistent throughout the webinar: good design is long lasting, adaptable, and socially embedded. ‘There’s no single solution, just relentless innovation,’ as McGrady put it. Or, in Kucharek’s words: ‘Designers are not just shaping structures – they’re shaping futures.’ 

This webinar is in association with  Oscar Acoustics, Michelmersh, and Thrislington Cubicles