Building for a Changing Climate

A shift that was always necessary

For much of the twentieth century, architecture treated the natural environment as a backdrop — a set of conditions to be managed, mitigated, or overcome through technology. Buildings were sealed, mechanically conditioned, and designed with little reference to the climate they sat within. The energy required to maintain them was treated as an operational detail rather than a design variable. That approach is no longer defensible, and we do not practise it.

The shift toward environmentally responsive design is not, for us, a response to regulation or market pressure. It is a correction — a return to principles that informed building before mechanical systems made it possible to ignore them entirely. Buildings that work with their climate rather than against it are more comfortable, more durable, and more honest about the resources they consume.

Passive strategies first

Our environmental approach begins with the passive before the active. Orientation, massing, window placement, thermal mass, cross-ventilation — these are the primary instruments. We ask how much of a building's heating, cooling, and lighting load can be eliminated through design before we begin specifying systems to manage what remains.

This sequence matters. A building that is well oriented and well massed requires a fraction of the mechanical infrastructure of one that is not. That reduction has consequences across the entire lifespan of the building — lower energy consumption, fewer systems to maintain and replace, a simpler and more durable interior.

Material selection and embodied carbon

Operational energy is only part of the picture. The carbon embedded in a building's materials — extracted, processed, transported, and assembled before the building is ever occupied — can represent a significant proportion of its total lifetime environmental impact. We take embodied carbon seriously at the material selection stage, not as an afterthought.

This does not mean defaulting to timber for everything, or avoiding concrete categorically. It means understanding the full profile of each material we specify — where it comes from, how it was produced, how long it will last, and what happens to it at the end of the building's life. Sometimes concrete, with its thermal mass properties and extreme durability, is the right environmental choice for a particular application. The answer is always specific to the project.

Designing for longevity

The most sustainable building is one that lasts. A well-designed, well-built structure that stands for two hundred years has a very different environmental profile from one that requires significant renovation every thirty. We design for longevity deliberately — in our material choices, in the robustness of our details, and in the flexibility of our plans.

A building that can adapt to changing uses over time does not need to be demolished and replaced when those uses change. This is perhaps the most important environmental principle we apply — designing not just for the client and program of today, but for the unknown occupants and requirements of the next century.