Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN)

Peace, joy, and unity in 2025 🌟 We’d like to take this opportunity to extend a big, warm HELLO, WELCOME and THANK YOU to all you amazing people in our community ✨🎄 Wishing you a peaceful and joyful holiday season as we welcome 2025! May the new year bring harmony, kindness, and togetherness for all. Here's to a brighter, more connected world 🌟 We truly appreciate you being here, and as the season of giving is upon us, we’d be so grateful if you could also consider supporting ACAN financially. If you haven’t already, please become an ACAN Member. Or, if you're feeling generous, even a small one-off donation would make a big difference. Find links to do both via our website - link in comment below 🙏 Your support means the world to us! If your organisation would like to contribute, we’d love to chat! Just drop us an email at [email protected] to explore the options. What makes ACAN truly special is the diversity and scale of our work - from grassroots events in local communities to influencing global policy 🌍 We’re driving change at every level, together. Thank you for being part of this incredible journey! In solidarity and with holiday cheer, ACAN! ✊✊🏻✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿

We are looking for SPONSORS 🙏 Looking to 2025, ACAN is returning to Futurebuild in a BIG way! This year's theme is IMPACT so let's show the visitors how important it is to work together in our climate action, and bring the vibrant character of our network to the event! Can you or your organisation sponsor us? We need financial help to realise our presence at Futurebuild 2025! Please contact us at [email protected] to let us know how you could help. 🎤 We are also looking for material and equipment support. If have materials, display construction mock-ups or samples, or equipment (screen, speakers, microphone, tools, van/car transport and more). 🏗 Equally, if you would like to collaborate with us on our talks & workshops programme during the event, and share your work, expertise and/or initiatives that will inspire us, please get in touch too! Together, we have an impact! 📣✊ Join us! #Futurebuild #ACAN #ArchitectsCAN #ArchitectsClimateActionNetwork #Support #Architects #BuiltEnvironment

🍩 ACAN at Global Donut Days 2024: Sectors Meet the Doughnut - Sector Transformation Through Three Initiatives 🍩 Rebecca and Vincent of ACAN’s Climate Literacy Group presented their Materials Doughnut workshop for Global Doughnut Days a few weeks back. It was part of a short selection of talks themed around using the Doughnut Economics framework in urban settings. We presented how we have developed our Materials Doughnut workshop, which is a tool for promoting critical thinking in material specification through environment and social lenses. The other initiatives discussed were the Highways Doughnut and Doughnut for Urban Development. It was fantastic to hear about how doughnut economics is being used across the built environment, especially following our own Book Club discussions on Kate Raworth's book. Speakers: - Ilektra Kouloumpi, Senior Global Doughnut Expert - Rebecca Cooper, Coordinator ACAN Climate Literacy Working Group - Kasper Guldager Jensen, Co-Founder Home.Earth - Vincent MacDonald, Coordinator ACAN Climate Literacy Working Group - Kristin Strandberg, Cities Strategist, Circle Economy - Matt Philips, Cornwall Council: Highway Asset Manager, Wessex Live Lab 📹 Watch the session now! (Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) have put it on their youtube - link in comment below ⬇️ #DoughnutEconomics

“It is important to emphasise that Maydew House is not an unsafe place in which to live. If left un-disturbed the asbestos is perfectly safe,” Cllr Ian Wingfield, 2010 The 26 storeys of Maydew House loom over Southwark Park. It’s a building I’ve walked past frequently over the past decade or so. It’s not an iconic post-war building, but it does have a certain quality with crisp, heavily-scored horizontal balconies and a similarly crisp (not exactly Trellick Tower, but not bad) stair core clinging to the side. Recently scaffolding has started to engulf it as preparations begin for the building’s demolition Remarkably Maydew House has now been vacant for almost a decade. Southwark decanted all 144 households in 2015. The council wanted to make improvements to the building, but apparently couldn’t without disturbing asbestos. Some dispute this. In 2012 they explored alternative options; refurbishment, selling off the block, or demolishing it. Ultimately they selected the first option. Works were undertaken to strip the building back to its structure and construct a new sub-station. Proposals were drawn up to refurbish the building and add 24 flats in a rooftop extension. The proposals received planning consent in 2018. These works were estimated to cost £42million. A subsequent design without the extension received consent in 2021. By 2023 the estimated cost of the works had risen to £70million. With this sum deemed unpalatable, Southwark - having already spent £15million - made the decision to spend another couple of million demolishing the building. As it stands there are no proposals that I’m aware of to replace it. In summary; - circa £17million spent - A building standing empty for almost a decade - 144 families uprooted - A net loss of 144 flats - God knows how much embodied carbon lost This seems absolutely crackers. Development isn’t a perfect science, and there are challenging mitigating circumstances, but faced with the dual crises, of housing and climate, one would have to imagine there’s a better solution. #architecture #housing #ukhousing #housingcrisis #climatecrisis #retrofit #MaydewHouse #Southwark Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN)

Interested in the Just Transition - here is a PhD opportunity!

Book your earlybird tickets for ASBP’s 9th annual Healthy Buildings Conference & Expo on Wednesday 26 February 2025 at the Human Rights Action Centre in London. https://lnkd.in/evTnmDCq #HealthyBuildings2025 highlights include: * Keynote talks from Mary Creagh CBE MP (tbc), Minister for Nature at Defra and John Palmer, Deputy Director at MHCLG. * Findings from the IMPACTT project, seeking to increase traceability and transparency in mass timber supply chains, with a focus on biodiversity impacts. * Case study: A new seven storey, cross laminated timber building in Cardiff called 'The Cascade' which will provide 40+ affordable apartments for social rent. * The latest research on healthy indoor environments and VOCs with talks from UCL, Architype and dRMM. * Panel discussions on biogenic carbon and regenerative design. Join us for a day full of learning and networking opportunities. Limited tickets available for this in-person event. 25% early bird discount until end of December 2024! Further discounts for members of our Partners: Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN), AECB - Association for Environment Conscious Building, British Woodworking Federation, CIBSE, The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB), CIRIA, Fit for the Future Network, Finishes and Interiors Sector, Good Homes Alliance, Interior Design Declares - UK, natureplus, Passivhaus Trust, SuperHomes, Sustainable Traditional Building Alliance, The Green Register and Woodknowledge Wales.

It’s a small world after all… Last year, building on the momentum from our Net Zero Neighbourhoods talk at the Building Centre, we hosted an event as part of FANN23, the Festival of Architecture in Norwich & Norfolk. FANN23 celebrated architecture in Norwich and Norfolk, running from September to November 2023. At our event, we presented this 1:20 scale model of the Net Zero Neighbourhoods project and gave a talk on its key features. We also showcased the CobBauge and FibreBroads projects, along with a sustainable materials library. Read more about our vision for The Net Zero Neighbourhood on our website - link in comment below 🔗 #Architecture #Norfolk #HudsonArchitects #NetZeroNeighbourhood #NetZero #SustainableDevelopment #GreenBuilding 📷 : Lewis Williams

Pollard Thomas Edwards wins approval for Islington estate regeneration

Our statement on the recent M&S Oxford Street decision 📢 ACAN, along with the many others across our industry fighting to mitigate climate breakdown, are hugely disappointed at this latest decision to allow the demolition of the flagship M&S building on Oxford Street. Whilst acknowledging that the current Government's discretion on this decision was fundamentally proscribed by the High Court ruling against the previous Government earlier this year, this further highlights the urgent need to update the National Planning Policy Framework to properly protect the existing buildings of this country, locking-in their intrinsic embodied carbon with a presumption for low-carbon retrofit. We would also call on M&S themselves to reconsider the ethics of their decision to redevelop this site, with all the carbon costs that entails, irrespective of this latest decision. Indeed we believe that they are obliged to if they are to remain true to the net zero carbon aspirations and commitments they themselves set out in their own Plan A: Our Planet roadmap. Irrespective of these demands, the M&S Oxford Street planning battle over the last three years has highlighted not only the growing strength of voices across industry and society for the necessary retention of existing buildings. Simon Sturgis said at an ACAN meeting in June 2023: “New construction is an existential threat to humanity.” If we are to have any chance of meeting the CCC net zero targets of 78% reduction in emissions by 2035, developers should be looking to adapt and reuse existing buildings, this significantly reduces CO2 emissions and is in line with net zero aspirations. ACAN is committed to campaigning against demolition and is developing a demolition map highlighting buildings threatened with demolition (see the map - link in statement on our website). See also: Twentieth Century Society #ExistingBuildings #MarksAndSpencer #Demolition #ArchitecturalHeritage #Heritage #ClimateAction #MarksAndSpencerOxfordStreet Mark Rowe Federica Romeo Beattie Deepthi Ravi