However weird you feel inside, you’re not alone. That’s the literal message of this delightful animated short created for the UK children’s charity Childline — a 24-hour hotline that helps kids navigate bullying, abuse, sex education, and pretty much any other stressor you can imagine. Directed by Catherine Prowse (previously), the film imagines the sometimes unbearable anxiety of growing up and the ultimately futile attempt to bottle it all up. Prowse also shares a fun making-of clip. (via Vimeo Staff Picks)
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios has developed a free tool called FCBS Carbon to help architects estimate and reduce the whole-life carbon emissions of a building proposal.
FCBS Carbon takes the form of a spreadsheet that can be used throughout the design process to predict a building's carbon emissions over its lifespan to help architects work out how to reduce or offset them.
Whole-life carbon emissions mean all the CO2 produced by a building, including its construction, demolition and the carbon footprint of all the building materials.
Above: FCBS Carbon is a non-technical spreadsheet. Top image: an example of an output sheet
Users can then alter input data to compare different building elements and materials to identify sustainable alternatives for a proposal and the scale of carbon offsetting required to achieve zero-carbon.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios' aim is to encourage design teams to analyse the potential environmental impact of a building they are designing and identify the changes required to make it net-zero carbon.
The studio developed FCBS Carbon in response to its commitments to the Architects Declare initiative, which is calling on the architecture industry to help alleviate the climate crisis.
Graphs are generated to help visualise a building's embodied carbon
The spreadsheet's designers hope it will also encourage UK firms to meet the targets of the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge, which calls for all new and retrofitted buildings to achieve net-zero whole-life carbon.
"Understanding the impact arising from our design choices is an essential step for architects and designers if we are to meet the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge commitments and reach net-zero carbon emissions," said the studio's associate Joe Jack Williams.
"We have developed FCBS Carbon using standardised and benchmarked data to empower the industry to navigate complex design variables without the burden of creating a full bill of materials each time."
Users can also use the tool to analyse whole-life carbon emissions
"In our support of the Architects Declare manifesto, we agreed to share knowledge and research on an open-source basis," added Ian Taylor, partner of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.
"With a limited timescale in which to dramatically curb such emissions, embodied carbon is becoming increasingly important, as a large part of these emissions are incurred immediately. Appreciation of embodied carbon also helps us to understand the value of the materials we already have."
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios made FCBS Carbon a spreadsheet to negate the need for complex CAD models. It also allows architects to analyse a building's potential environmental impact from the early stages of the design process.
It comprises five sheets, three of which require users to input simple details about the building, such as its size, purpose and materiality. The final two use this data to predict the overall carbon footprint of a scheme over a 60-year lifespan.
Paradise is a carbon-negative office building by the studio
The calculation is based on data from the ICE Database, an embodied energy and carbon database for building materials, and environmental product declarations (EPDs), an independently-verified measure of a product's environmental performance.
It also considers how the building may offset its carbon emissions through processes such as reusing building elements, carbon sequestration or on-site renewable energy sources.
Paradise will have an exposed glulam and CLT structure
To help users contextualise their results, they are compared to RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge targets and other industry benchmarks.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios intends that architects using the tool do not view results as an exact value for the carbon associated with a project, but instead as a starting point. It encourages studios to use the spreadsheet in tandem with more detailed analyses later in the design process.
FCBS Carbon can be downloaded from the studio's website, and an online workshop dedicating to using the tool will take place during London Climate Action Week, which starts on 14 November 2020.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios is a British architecture firm founded in 1978, formerly known as Feilden Clegg. The studio recently hit the headlines for its proposal for a six-storey cross-laminated timber office named Paradise that will be carbon negative.
The last two years have seen a sharp rise of climate awareness after the United Nations warned that humanity has 12 years to limit global warming, or risk catastrophic changes to the planet.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios team: Joe Jack Williams and Joe Taylor Collaborators and advisors: Marta Galinanes Garcia and Edoardo Tibuzzi at AKT II, Steve Webb and Alex Lynes, at Webb Yates, Julia Ratcliffe at Scale Consulting and Simon Sturgis at Targeting Zero
Architecture office Tate Harmer has converted a 100-year-old fire station in Belsize Park, London, into a set of apartments.
Belsize Fire Station was designed and built in the Arts and Crafts style in 1914 by the architect Charles Canning Winmill for London County Council.
Tate Harmer preserved the Grade II*-listed building
The station was operational and used by firefighters and their engines – originally horse-drawn – until 2014 when it was closed due to council cuts.
London architects Tate Harmer carefully upgraded the Grade II*-listed building to improve its thermal performance and turned it into 20 homes.
The glazed white brick tiles are original
Original features such as the fireman's poles and the double-height bays where the engines were kept have been preserved and incorporated into the homes.
Below street level, former accommodation for the firefighters has been neatly converted into one-bedroom apartments.
The walls and floors have been insulated
Open-plan apartments with individual gardens have been carved out of the ground and first floors. Second-floor apartments with double-height ceilings have been built up into the vaulted roof.
"Creating new homes within a listed fire station is not simple but it's important to retain London's heritage where possible and improving the sustainable credentials of our built landscape," said Tate Harmer partner Rory Harmer.
"The most environmentally-friendly building is the one that already exists."
Steel staircases and wooden beams feature inside
Tate Harmer insulated the roof, basement and exterior walls and improved the air-tightness of the windows.
Each apartment has a dual aspect for cross-ventilation, with south-facing open plan living areas to make the most of the sunlight during the day.
Firefighter accommodation has been turned into flats
Existing white-glazed bricks help the building absorb and retain heat to minimise temperature fluctuations.
A communal heating system for the apartments, accessed by buttons in each flat, cuts down carbon emissions and helps keep fuel bills for occupants low.
Belsize Fire Station was built in 1914
Interiors feature exposed brick fireplaces and timber beams, with metal spiral staircases for duplexes. The front doors are, appropriately, painted fire-engine red.
Tate Harmer was founded in 2007 by Jerry Tate and Rory Harmer and is based in Dalston. Recently the practice built a staircase for visitors to explore a subterranean shaft dug by the 19th-century engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel that's been turned into a performance space.
Photography is by Kilian O'Sullivan.
Project credits:
Architect: Tate Harmer Contractor: Old House Development Client: Platinum Land Planning consultant: Nicholas Taylor and Associates QS: Costplan Group Structural engineer: Coyle Kennedy M&E engineer: IN2 Fire engineer: BB7 Heritage: DLG Architects
