We’ll be able to make decisions about how we want to intervene, and it could end up shaping the policy environment.
The benefits of a Platform approach to design and construction: time, cost, quality.A Platforms approach to Design for Manufacture and Assembly (P-DfMA) delivers significant benefits to a project, including: reduced costs, reduced programme time, reduced carbon, reduced numbers of workers required to build, increased health and safety, increased quality, increased flexibility and adaptability.. And we can deliver all of this with no compromise on the aesthetic quality of the building.
The beauty of Circle Birmingham hospital – including the spectacular cantilever we achieved over the main entrance – bears witness to that last point.And this is not simply architectural posturing.We know that the physical environment affects us directly, and it has been shown repeatedly that the patient experience of a beautiful and uplifting hospital environment makes a materially positive difference to clinical outcomes.. Clearly, all of these benefits are critical when healthcare is under such pressure – pressure which shows no signs of abating.
When public money is being spent at such scale, the opportunity to increase benefits across the piece while also making the money go further is surely one that we should seize.. A proven approach.Our approach is proven to work.
There is nothing stopping us from doing this other than inertia and reluctance among some parties to change from traditional methods of design and construction.
But as recent events have shown, traditional is not good enough.. We need new approaches, and smart solutions.However, the result is that embodied carbon in buildings, due to material usage and the amount of carbon which is integral to the building itself, becomes a larger proportion of the overall carbon emitted from the building across its lifespan.
As such, embodied carbon is increasingly playing a much bigger role in our day-to-day focus on sustainability as architects and designers..Embodied carbon varies based on the building typology.
For example, in residential architecture, we might see a ratio of one third embodied carbon to two thirds operational carbon across a building’s lifespan.On the other hand, with a building like a data centre, where the operational energy of the building is very high, operational carbon will always be a larger portion of the total, whole-life carbon of the building..