Marie Guitton’s Post

💡 Dilemmas in Retrofitting 🏘 “I want to make my house more sustainable to reduce my high energy bills. But is it worth the investment? It's good for the climate, but is that my responsibility? Living in a protected townscape makes it harder - solar panels aren’t allowed on the street-side, and the back-side is less profitable. What should I do? What do my neighbors do?" The built environment is the place where many future challenges become concrete. We have to make sure that our houses become more sustainable, resilient to the many aspects of climate change, affordable, comfortable and that their cultural values are advanced and protected. By acknowledging the different, sometimes conflicting, aspects of retrofitting, we can foster conversations among various stakeholders and find design solutions that drive positive change. Excited to kick-off the new seed project 'Apples & Oysters' together with Lidwine Spoormans (Delft University of Technology), Peter Mooij (AMS Institute) and Martijn de Vries (Populytics), funded by Delft Design for Values Institute! The goal is is to develop a framework, for decision-making in sustainable housing retrofitting. This framework will reveal implicit values underlying retrofitting measures, making them explicit. Interested? Get in touch and find more information on: https://lnkd.in/ewSf3FNH This project builds on research from: - “Respectful Renovation”, experimenting with a participatory process to assess values of housing neighborhoods followed by selecting sustainable interventions that match these values Lidwine Spoormans (https://lnkd.in/ezyK26Sg) - the "High-hanging Fruit programme" (Andy van den Dobbelsteen, Paul Voskuilen and Kyra Koning) (https://lnkd.in/ewphtzia) and “Collect Your Retrofits” a community-led approach to energy retrofit based on parametric modelling and design space exploration in heritage buildings (https://lnkd.in/ex4jQhJT) (Superworld, AMS Institute, Delft University of Technology) - Developing “Participatory Value Evaluation” (PVE) to facilitate participation in the sustainable energy transition and investigate value trade-offs that citizens make regarding specific energy policy problems (https://lnkd.in/eXvTtv4r).

Regrettably, there is currently no viable and scalable strategy to address Australia's severe affordable housing crisis, particularly in the context of the NSW ALP Minns State Government's plans for Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) in Sydney's metropolitan suburbs. The current shortage of apartments is estimated to be approximately 35,000 units per year over the next 5-7 years, while the current pipeline is only expected to deliver around 10,000 units over the next three years. Relying solely on conventional and inefficient custom construction methods exacerbates the situation, as Sydney currently needs more skilled tradespeople. Over 20,000 tradies left NSW last year, further contributing to the demand for affordable rental accommodation.

When you talk about sustainability and ecofriendly designs, people imagine infrastructure on an unprecedented scale tailored to achieve some skewed idea of what they imagine sustainability to be. The truth however is, eco-urban design can be much simpler than people imagine. It can be a simple interfacing with natural green elements within urban infrastructure - in other words, as simple as planting trees. Take the examples below, simply introducing trees to a road design naturally drive down overall temperature of said area considerably. The friendliness of a cool walkway encourages residents to walk, improves life experience and overall happiness of the people living in said area - this means it can contribute to significant improvement in the mental health of residents. Furthermore, it is pleasing to the eyes and to the senses. Between the examples below, very nearly every human on earth would pick the second street over the first. An environmentally friendly infrastructure is an opportunity to kill multiple birds with one stone. It is not a radical overhaul as people imagine it to be. Sometimes, it is just as simple as interfacing trees to urban design.

Exploring Sustainability in Real Estate 🌿 Why does sustainability matter so much in today's real estate world? Let's delve into the reasons: 💰 Are green buildings worth the investment, considering their higher upfront costs? Do they truly save money in the long run? 🌟 How crucial is occupant well-being in building design? Can sustainable features like better air quality and natural light genuinely enhance people's lives? 🏗️ What innovative strategies are real estate companies employing to go green? From selecting locations to construction methods, what new approaches are being explored? 🌆 How does sustainability benefit entire communities? Do initiatives like public transport improvements and green spaces make cities more desirable places to live? Join the discussion! Share your insights on the significance of sustainability in real estate and its impact on shaping the future of our communities. 🏡💚 #Sustainability #GreenBuilding #RealEstateFuture What steps do you think real estate professionals should take to further integrate sustainability into their practices? #KasturiDevelopment #SustainableRealEstate #GreenBuildings #EcoFriendlyHomes #InnovationInRealEstate #CommunityDevelopment #UrbanSustainability #EnvironmentalResponsibility #GreenCities #FutureOfRealEstate

Does upfront investment in circular construction equal future payback? Have you ever wondered if investing in circular construction pays off in the long run? Let's talk about the Venlo City Hall building, a pioneer that sparked a vital conversation on this topic. Designed with circularity as its core principle, every material used in Venlo City Hall was chosen for its ability to be taken apart and reused. The creators went the extra mile, creating 'material passports' that track the production and origin of each component. Here's where it gets interesting: recent figures reveal that the cost savings from deconstructing the building are comparable to the initial extra investment required for its circular design. But that's not all – the project shines in other areas too! The environmental benefits are clear, reducing waste and promoting sustainability. Plus, the people who use the building have reported positive experiences – something that surely adds value for investors looking at the bigger picture. Venlo City Hall is a great example of circular construction being a smart financial strategy. What are your experiences of circular construction? Share your examples in the comments. Image: Kraaijvanger Architects #CircularConstruction #VenloCityHall #BuiltEnvironment

Feel up to entering a circular building competition? The "Trophées Bâtiments Circulaires" (Circular Building Awards for non-French speakers!) is a competition for #construction projects geared towards #reuse. It's part of the Booster du Réemploi project, which was set up by Action for Market Transformation - A4MT and companies in the construction sector keen to lessen its significant #carbonfootprint. Construction21 - International is working with them this year. This year, the Awards will be highlighting large-scale and, above all, reproducible buildings. The competition is open to all types of building (public or private, residential, tertiary, commercial, industrial, cultural, health-related, etc.), public space developments and infrastructure or reuse projects. Projects may be submitted from 8 April to 5 July 2024, and must be located in France, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland or Luxembourg and delivered no later than 15 July 2024. There are other criteria too – see our webpage! There is a Circular Design category, where projects will be evaluated according to circular economy principles: 🏡Responsible consumption 🏡Functional economy 🏡Extending the lifespan of materials 🏡Industrial and territorial ecology 🏡Eco-design 🏡Sustainable sourcing 🏡Recycling.   Think you have a winner? Then apply and see! See our webpage for more details: bit.ly/3UVfGqZ

Starting off 2025 we wanted to share some personal highlights that we have enjoyed throughout 2024. We do love our projects, we love delivering sustainable, permanently relevant buildings, but here we are going to celebrate some of the other things that we like to do! Survive until ‘25” has been the motto for many in the construction industry, and we know 2024 hasn’t been the easiest year for many. The headline grabbing “shockwaves” of high-profile collapses tell only part of the story of the strain that many have felt. We are immeasurably grateful to our industry community- clients and collaborators who have enabled us to develop the practice over the past few years- and we hope you enjoy seeing a little bit of what we do outside of design team meetings.   Material learning and sharing In the Circular Steel conference this year James Bruce shared what we had learnt through the steel reuse on the redevelopment of Bedfont Lakes. The trip to Holcim in Lyon allowed us a chance to see the latest in concrete technologies, whilst Manoj Gihwala and David Illingworth shared our experiences and challenges with other industry players. We also visited the The Stonemasonry Company Limited to learn about how we could utilise pretensioned stone elements into the design for Summerville College. David Illingworth joined Architecture Today round table to discuss the future of circularity in the built environment.   New ways of working Progression of our digital tools included a new embodied carbon assessment tool, new visualisation tools for building movement monitoring as well as progressing our steel reuse tool. Arthur Coates presented our steel reuse at the IStructE reuse conference, hypothesising on the potential industry impact. Lucy Fryer was named the IStructE 2024 Pai Lin Li winner, her research in to decarbonising primary steelmaking will include exploring the European green hydrogen production, DRI plants and EAF-DRI plants in Germany and Spain.   Reaching out The Skyline Skills Hub was launched this year, something that we have been contributing to for the past few years- a great milestone for the scheme and something we hope will help address the industries skills gap. We attended the BCO conference in Birmingham and London Real Estate Forum , keeping abreast of the latest challenges London faces. We presented our One Golden Lane scheme at Footprints+, showing what we feel is one of the more progressive structural responses to the challenges the city if facing.   Staying Social As building nerds quite a few of our company socials have been tours of buildings, but not all! We’ve done pasta making, a company pub quiz (now an annual feature hosted by Harry Graham) and a fine art class (that was less refined than it sounds)!   As we start to see the buds of exciting new projects, we are looking forward to 2025- and have some exciting developments for LSL to share! Wishing you, and your communities - a safe and happy new year!

"What is it that needs to be talked about more in the sustainable building and design space?" Below are some key takeaways we at Illinois Green took from GreenBuild 2024 and, for me personally, my question is always what is it that we, as the building community, need to be talking about more? What information sharing has the biggest impact? What 'business as usual' models do we need to tackle? Whether you went to GreenBuild or not, I would love to hear people's thoughts as we go into 2025 - "What is it that needs to be talked about more in the sustainable building and design space?"

Our team was thrilled to attend Greenbuild International Conference & Expo 2024 in Philadelphia last week and connect with so many building professionals and sustainability advocates from across the country! This year’s Greenbuild came at somewhat of an inflection point for our industry—on one hand, the green economy has seen more momentum than ever before; on the other, there are unknown shifts in sustainable policy on the horizon. But we were inspired to continue our mission into 2025: sharing knowledge and best practices, creating a stronger green building community, and breaking down barriers to sustainable, high-performance buildings.   Here are some key takeaways from Greenbuild 2024:   Money: We talk a lot about how to finance a project to get it off the ground. But what we should be discussing in connection with this is how we can change our contracts and fee structures in order to spend more time and budget on early interventions and team integrations to make sustainable, low-carbon buildings more feasible and commonplace.   Time: Building off the previous point, project teams need more time to perform early interventions such as whole building analyses, early design energy modeling, and other examinations of a project’s sustainability. Yet time equals money, so how do we balance that with other critical aspects of design and construction? One way is to consider areas of our jobs that have the potential to be performed by intelligent software so that we can focus more time on early interventions.   Community: Throughout the week, we heard many anecdotal stories about how a single conversation, email, or meeting changed the trajectory of a major project toward a more sustainable outcome. It was a great reminder that at the end of the day, it’s the personal connections and conversations among our community that help accomplish these goals. So don’t shy away from making new connections—even if it’s just grabbing coffee to catch up with an old colleague—because our community is stronger when our voices come together.

Rotterdam is a model for city development. It's sustainability strategies are shaping urban planning worldwide. I spoke to Chantal Zeegers, Vice Mayor of Rotterdam and in charge for climate, construction and housing. Here’s how Rotterdam is innovating: 1. It was the first city to offer interest-free loans for making houses more sustainable. Not everybody can afford solar panels, insulation, or other measures needed for climate-adaptive housing. This aid helps people advance in their sustainability efforts. 2. Hydrogen water taxi. Adding hydrogen to a water taxi requires fitting hydrogen tech into the boats. It also needs setting up hydrogen refuelling stations. So, making a hydrogen-powered water taxi involves setting up a whole hydrogen supply chain and Rotterdam is leading the way in their know-how. 3. It has one of the largest wind turbines in the harbour on the Maasvlakte, the Haliade. Rotterdam is a testbed for big wind energy projects. With a large harbour, the city can support these kinds of innovations. Last week Rotterdam hosted the 26th World Energy Congress and is a destination of choice for events focusing on energy sector. 4. Urban roof project, known as ‘Life at Urban Roofs.’ Multifunctional roofs are being tested in six locations across Rotterdam. People use them for different purposes. These include solar panels, green spaces, water retention as well as a terrace. There are more initiatives. Urban Future. will present them in Rotterdam from 5 - 7.  June. They will give more examples on: 1. Circular economy 2. Climate adaptation 3. Social transformation 4. Sustainable construction I will be attending to report about the event. Let me know which of the projects can align with your event objectives. Sponsored post in collaboration with Rotterdam Partners, City of Rotterdam and Rotterdam Ahoy Convention Centre.