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Week notes #3 & #4…

Lately it’s been all about http://affordablepassivhaus.info:

Over the last few months we have been carrying out a detailed R&D project into making Passivhaus design principles a financially viable option for social housing. Working alongside environmental designers, and certified European Passivhaus consultants Brooks Devlin, our proposals for an affordable Passivhaus were created initially in response to a call for solutions by the BRE Passivhaus competition in 2011.

We took up the challenge to develop our proposals further because we think that construction standards in the UK will require a significant move towards Passivhaus principles. We are launching the project at an event in February aimed at local authorities and housing associations in order to disprove the myths surrounding Passivhaus build costs and share our research.

If you’re involved in delivering new build affordable housing and would like to come along to our event on 21st February in Birmingham, please register your interest via the Affordable Passivhaus website, get updates from the twitter account or drop us a line on email.

Week 2 of 2012 has brought with it a reminder that this is in fact week number 1500 and something. An early spring clean is unearthing drawings and files of past projects, including some promotional material that reminded us all that 2012 is our 30th anniversary. Plans are afoot for a celebration later in the year…

We’ve finally taken the decision to clear some space in the office of old magazines and rather than dispose of them we’d really like them to go to a good home. Birmingham School of Architecture may be taking some, but if you’d like to have some copies of the Architect’s Journal from the last couple of decades, drop us a line.

So, this week we have been mostly…

If you’re a resident of Sutton Coldfield then you’ll have perhaps seen the progress of our work at Chase Farm Shop. As the extension to create a cafe nears completion Mike has been visiting site to help the client and contractor with some of the final design decisions.

In the drawing department there’s been more detailing – early work to help guide an as yet undecided upon contractor. Finding the right level of detail in the early stages isn’t easy, with all lines and junctions being interconnected, all product and material choices being interdependent, it’s not simply a matter of general arrangement. As an ex-partner at Axis once told me, the problem with starting a shadow gap on a buildings surface is knowing how to find the other end of it.

We’ve got some new SAP calculation software in the office, so the learning curve for that has begun with testing on a domestic extension project to compare the before and after results of our intervention. We still like to collaborate with specialists in this field, such as our fellow Passivhaus team members Brooks Devlin, but it’s important to have the basic skills in-house too.

The joys of public sector procurement are upon us, as we wrestle with another web site for tender submissions. To keep our spirits up we’ve been pushing forward with our Passivhaus seminar plans – confirming the team, agreeing the venue and even (dare I say it) starting a web site, because clearly there aren’t enough of them in the world.

The most important news of the week however, for all of us in this business, was the sad loss of both John Madin and Isi Metzstein. With our office and lives based in Birmingham and the founder member of the practice learning his craft in Scotland, the work of both architects had an important place in our history.

A review of Madin’s local housing work is long overdue for us and Mike is promising to dig out his slides of St Peter’s Seminary in Cardross. We’ll share them in a future week note.

Here’s the first of a new series of posts called ‘week notes’ – an idea created by Matt Webb and Jack Schulze at BERG to see what happens when you take the time to reflect on what you’re doing and what you’ve achieved every seven days.

We’re not sure how well this will translate in the slightly slower moving world of architecture and construction, but it’s got to be worth a try…

Week note #1

We’ve kicked off 2012 with technical challenges and event planning, with some of the office working on construction details and some of us plotting ways to develop the work ideas we’re interested in pursuing this year.

Our latest BMHT sites achieved planning approval at the end of last year, so now we’re turning our hand to a few details to help guide the construction costing as it goes out to tender this month. Katie has been getting to grips with the product that I covered in my review for BD’s Envelope magazine last year – Ibstock’s Tilebrick.

Lorna has started her second month with us after spending December getting our web site back in to shape and wrestling Highrise – our CRM system – into submission. This month will be about crafting things to share with clients such as newspapers, iPad apps, bookleteers and planning seminars on Passivhaus and Retrofit. Elsewhere in the office admin department there’s a New Year tidy underway, bringing with it a decision to finally throw out many of the old magazines we’ve hoarded for years. Thanks to a twitter conversation I’m hoping they’ll be heading to Birmingham School of Architecture rather than lost forever.

Mike is busy drawing, and site layouts for more BMHT projects are filling up pieces of tracing paper. Next week we’ll need to start working them up in BIM. The challenges of creating new streets and communities in some of the city’s infill sites means once again we have to return to first principles in places and question the house type and tenure possibilities for the neighbourhood. Liz is pulling together the final pieces of the puzzles that were presented to us in BMHT’s Phase 3, coordinating levels, manipulating landscape and arranging surfaces of buildings and gardens.

Meanwhile, I’m working on our live retrofit projects, talking to builders about costs and load-bearing structures at one end; working up our first estimate with a QS at the other and trying to make sure that the more innovative products like Porotherm and Homatherm are well understood. ‘R&D’ into the new map making tool by CASA and attempting to install a time management tool on our web server is ensuring the usual levels of geek research are maintained. Oh, and the file server is misbehaving. It’s a good job I like I.T.

This week we have been mostly listening to Radio 6, although I’m hatching a plan to introduce more dubstep and see what the results on productivity are.

Happy New Year!