The AJ Retrofit Awards
Introduction
A celebratory book in collaboration with Arup
Retrofit – a never-ending environmental story
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Introduction Paul Finch, AJ editorial director
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Adding value through retrofit Chris Jofeh, Arup global buildings retrofit leader
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Category winners and shortlist
The jury
Paul Finch, AJ editorial director Recent news that the Palace of Westminster will need to close for a long period in order to be able to carry out a major rebuilding programme represents a symbolic moment for those who have been flying the flag for retrofit as an idea in recent years. The awards celebrated in this publication, for example, are part of a long-term strategy by The Architects’ Journal to encourage and promote architecture that incorporates environmental considerations as a fundamental element rather than a ‘blingy’ or fashionable add-on. Nowhere is this approach more important than in the treatment of existing building stock, the main ‘culprit’ in the generation of carbon as a result of inefficient energy systems and poor – or even non-existent – insulation. UK housing stock is notoriously inefficient because of low building standards (which have greatly improved in recent years). Yet, until the Retrofit Awards were instituted, only new homes or the occasional historic restoration were honoured by the profession. What we have been able to show over the past three years is that it is perfectly possible to combine good architecture, conservation of the useful, and appropriate attitudes to energy and carbon issues. That is not to say that retrofit is always the best answer – sometimes it is simply better to put a failed building out of its misery – but it is to say that the evaluation of the existing, including the significant embodied carbon contained in any completed building, needs to be thorough rather than demolition taking place without any thought given to an alternative. At more or less the same time that all of this was going on, Simon Sturgis was carrying out research into embodied energy in office buildings – he showed that it was far more significant than previously realised – and Rab Bennetts was completing the first big winner in this awards programme, Hampshire County Council’s headquarters in Winchester. This scheme retained and improved an existing building, following a competition in which each architect except Bennetts Associates proposed demolition. Making use of the existing is a strategy that has roots in an approach to architecture exemplified by the phrase ‘long life, loose fit, low energy’; buildings are regarded XXXXXX
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