ADS5: Measurements

Our discussions of ethics will be framed through the challenge of designing zero carbon buildings. We are interested in measuring how to achieve this through the BRE’s Global Embodied Carbon Life Cycle Assessment (EN 15978), which is divided into five sections: Product; Construction; Use; End of Life; and Re-use/Recovery. We will use this document and these ‘sections’ as a framework against which to measure decisions in architectural practice through various ethical lenses, including carbon, cost, land use, employment, eco-systems, social, cultural, and poetic.

How we might integrate such decisions into buildings design follows ADS5’s interest in the etymology of all applied arts and architecture; namely tectonics, or the bringing together of materials to act as structure (kernform) and decorative envelope (kunstform). We are interested Gottfried Semper’s definition of this process as joining, binding, and completing. Joining and binding are the tectonic choice of materials and method of holding them together, while completion refers to how these designs become emblematic of their time and culture. This speaks of visual, tactile, poetic and cultural/phenomenological associations; ‘baggage’, which nees to be understood, owned, and critically rewritten to communicate its purpose at all scales.

ADS5 is structured around tutorials, seminars, and workshops with tutors, engineers, specialists, and craftspeople. Following Protagoran criteria, ADS5 will establish shared group values through proposition, negotiation, and agreement, allowing students and tutors to productively challenge one another throughout the year.

We will begin with measurement according to EN15978. Each student will dissect an existing building/typology of their choice as the beginning of creating an alternative ‘carbon copy’. We will ask how does the conventional construction of a house, housing block, school, cinema, hotel, or airport vary from temperate to tropical climates? How can we reduce operational carbon with different active and passive measures in humid vs arid environments? How does locally available material extraction play a role in carbon capture? And how does it reflect stereotomic and tectonic assembly? What are the economic conditions that influence architectural languages and supply chains? How does carbon sequestration differ from country to country?

These topics will be studied through lectures, seminars, and tutorials with tutors, specialists, engineers and material suppliers/fabricators. The outcomes will be summarised through research, drawing, and making and will comprise the following:

• EN15978 Embodied Carbon Life Cycle Assessment – the student’s chosen building type will be studied for its total embodied carbon. A ‘carbon copy’ will then be developed to illustrate how the same programme can be designed to be carbon negative.
• 1:20 Drawings – we will redesign a component or the envelope of the case study building as a ‘carbon copy’; an alternative construction method and building form with lower embodied carbon reflecting regional site conditions.
• 1:1/1:5 Models - we will fabricate a detail / junction of the ‘carbon copy’, exploring and researching craft through the thinking hands. A mini field trip will be arranged to visit stone masonry yards to explore the different stages of production and manufacturing.
• Book - the collective research, drawings and models will contribute to a growing global archive book of How to -veCO2, published yearly.

In Terms 2 and 3, ADS5 will move away from the ethical measurement of materials to the ethical measurement of programme by designing a single building, or group of buildings, informed by your area of enquiry in Term 1. Projects will identify shared common values to propose an ethical framework that can be embodied in their buildings, using issues at a local, national, or global scale as the foundation for their designs. Students will use the skillsets developed in Term 1 skillset to weave aesthetic, symbolic, and poetic meanings together with building performance and embodied carbon in construction, use and end of life.

Our core deliverable throughout the year will be a single, highly detailed 3D digital model that is a twin of your building. This model will be used as the basis for tutorials, crits, and submissions, and will operate as an extension and critique of how we communicate and design in practice. ADS5 will collaboratively develop projects through the digital inhabitation of these buildings and the use of this data to measure these buildings according to a full EN15978 embodied carbon life cycle assessment; using the digital space as both a design tool and dataset. The project will be underpinned by questioning how we measure and represent ethical decisions in architecture? Alongside students’ main projects, we and our collaborators will host secondary workshops, seminars, and reviews in the GROUPWORK office at 15 Clerkenwell Close, further delving into the studio’s ongoing areas of research and methods of communication.

Our field trip will be focused on sites of production and craft in low embodied carbon materials. In 2024/25, we hope to have a part – or fully–funded field trip that is sponsored by quarry owners. Locations may include Verona/Bari in Italy for the source products of stone quarries/innovative technologies, and Ljubljana-Slovenia for sourcing innovative timber technologies.

Karl Bötticher, Die Tektonik der Hellenen (The Tectonic of the Hellenes, 1852)

Barnabus Calder, Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency (Penguin Books, 2022)

Edward R. Ford, The Architectural Detail (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011)

Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture (MIT Press, 1995)

Rose Macaulay, The Pleasure of Ruins (Thames & Hudson, 1953)

Gottfried Semper, Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder Praktische Ästhetik (Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts, 1861–3)

Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (Yale University Press, 2008)

Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most Emminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. De Vere (MacMillan, 1912–15)

Amin Taha was born in Berlin, moved briefly to Baghdad then Southend-on-Sea, before settling in London, where is currently chairperson of GROUPWORK – an employee ownership trust. Before establishing an independent studio, he worked in the offices of Zaha Hadid, Wilkinson Eyre, Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, and Richard Murphy in Edinburgh, where he graduated. He has around 25 years of experience in practice, working on varying typologies from single houses, through housing, mixed-use towers, masterplans, galleries, museums and transport infrastructure. Amin continues to teach, write and lecture on architecture and currently also advises pension and investment property funds on sustainability.

Alex Cotterill joined GROUPWORK in 2012 and works on a variety of projects. In addition, he has led efforts in Materials research, working on designs for full-scale mock-ups using laminated waste stone, a by-product of quarries, several of which have been exhibited internationally. He is the Head of Third year in University of Creative Arts and was educated in Bristol, Brighton, and London.

Nerissa Yeung is an Architect at GROUPWORK. She has been experimenting and specialising on stone exoskeleton, vaults, pre-tensioning systems and structural timber across housing, mixed-use, infrastructure and cultural spaces. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Architecture at Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and Diploma of Architecture degree in Architectural Association.