Architect
Bridging the Design-Operate Divide in Commercial Buildings
March 23rd, 2023Net Zero Buildings Explored: The Forge, Bankside
February 15th, 2023
Uptick and PlanRadar: Two Scale-Ups Transforming Building Compliance for Life Safety
Dame Judith Hackitt has spoken extensively about the construction industry’s need for a more joined-up approach. Her report, ‘Building a Safer Future: Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety’, produced in the wake of the UK Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017, made a number of recommendations on preventing similar incidents from taking place in the future. Her […]

It Wouldn’t Be the First Time that Disease Reshaped our Built Environment
Are the open-plan office, co-working, and hotdesking all dead? Is remote working the new normal? Will our commercial real estate ever be the same again? These are the questions swirling around the buildings industry as we look ahead to the mysterious post-COVID landscape. “We are, at this moment, probably prone to overthinking a pandemic’s influence […]

Legacy Procurement Practices Continue to Hold Back the Building IoT Market
Construction methodology is still, for the most part, archaic. It starts with a strategic definition, where a business case is developed around the client’s requirements and budgets, and sites are appraised. Once the project is defined, preparation and briefing can begin, where budgets, outcomes and aspirations are refined further and feasibility can be studied. Next, […]

Taking the Next Step in Standardized Construction for an “Office 1.0” Target
“The model the [construction] industry has defaulted to is based around design and build, where responsibility to complete the building design is passed down the supply chain. It has been driven by a desire to protect investment returns and transfer risk. But it has become a barrier to innovation,” says Neil Pennell, head of design […]

WZMH Architects Take “a Critical Look at How Buildings are Built from the Inside Out”
“If you’re going to do a floor panel off an assembly line… let’s see what else we can put in the floor panel,” says Zenon Radewych, partner and principal at Toronto-based WZMH Architects. This month the firm won the Award of Excellence the Canadian Consulting Engineering Awards for a prefabricated smart building component that is […]

Step-by-Step Towards a 3D Printed Future for Construction

Moving Past the Era of Underperformance to an Age of Better Building Construction
Why is the construction industry underperforming? The skills shortage is a reason for poor quality work and slow technology uptake, labor and material costs explain high rates for the customer, and each blames the previous link in the construction supply chain for whatever is going wrong. The time has come for the construction sector to […]

On Buildings that Compute. A Proposal.
“What if the intelligent matter of our surroundings could understand us, give us feedback and communicate with us? What if the walls surrounding us were not only supporting our roofs, but had increased functionality? What if each brick, or building block, was a self-powered, decentralised computing entity that would comprise a part of an emerging, […]