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 simultaneously supplying the market. While acknowledging the aesthetic appeal of rammed earth,  Coeckelberghs cautions that it is technically complex and unaffordable at scale. In this epi ..read more

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 transformed into beautiful buildings. But this was not the case from the outset.  Daniel first incorporated waste bottles into an early project because the budget ran out before the windows h ..read more

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 waste streams, and this requires a new approach to detailing and ongoing maintenance. ‘The industry is going through a huge learning process and we should not be scared of getting it wrong,’ she ..read more

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 to ‘build our intuition about what impacts embodied carbon and emissions from different materials,’ says Watson. Watson highlights the importance of querying the firing required to achieve different ..read more

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 European focus on life cycle analysis and the Global Warming Potential of materials is starting to be integrated with the earlier American focus on healthy materials and toxic chemical content ..read more

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 sustainable cities of the future; how building housing with timber can reduce its carbon burden by as much as 75%; and why we should stop building basements (they are up to five times as carbon inten ..read more

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 Lauren Shevills, now lead retrofit innovation and delivery officer at Westminster City Council, explains that Public Practice has changed the trajectory of her career, enabling her to marry her passio ..read more

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 need to prove its chain of custody because it had no FSC certification. We also discuss how working with found materials requires a willingness and ability to improvise as a designer and creates new aest ..read more

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 Orms’ material passports can be adapted for retrofit. ‘We must treat all materials as the precious resource they are,’ she says. She talks about her practice’s Stirling Prize-shortlisted Cambridg ..read more

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 Scotland, including a Passivhaus equivalence standard for all new housing. Fallon describes the growing community of architectural practices in Scotland pushing for more sustainable outcomes. Fallon has bee ..read more