Zero Ambitions Podcast

Jeff invited Mhairi Grant, co founder of award-winning architectural practice Paper Igloo, to join us to talk about the challenges of ensuring that one's ideas for sustainable design actually make their way through to the construction phase.

The subject was sparked by a conversation she and Jeff had about lessons learned from a flawed project (that we discuss) and what it takes to ensure that our best, or even just easiest ideas are delivered upon in the build phase.

Usually, we'd think about specifying a project in a way that can resist value engineering, but sometimes the project can be scuppered by something as simple as an easily avoidable comprehension issue.

Notes from the show

• Mhairi Grant on LinkedIn
• A link to Scotland's Passivhaus Consultation: Building Regulations: Determining the principles for a Scottish equivalent to the Passivhaus standard: Stage 1 consultation
• The Paper Igloo website
• Paper Igloo on Instagram
• The Passive House Plus feature on Mhairi's own home in Stirlingshire

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
We don't actually earn anything from this, and it's quite a lot of work, so we have to promote the day jobs.

• Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn page (we still don't have a proper website)
• Jeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - [email protected]; Everything is User Experience
• Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
• Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon Upfront
• Join ACAN
• Join the AECB
• Join the IGBC
• Check out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women

**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

Apologies for the delay, the lost podcast has been returned and is ready for release.

'Don't Waste Buildings' should be a straightforward proposition. It seems obvious. Especially so in the face of the climate crisis. Unfortunately, the business of the built environment is not yet on board completely.

Our guests for this episode are the founders of UK-based campaign group Don't Waste Buildings, Will Hurst (Architects Journal) Leanne Tritton (Ing Media), and Richard Nelson (Abyss Global).

They're a group who are seeking to remedy this challenge by pressuring government and persuading business to both do better. They're doing some really interesting work and they're new, so they need support.

Please note: the graphic we refer can be found here (about 15 minutes in). I'll update this reference with a link to the Passive House Plus article once it's published.

Notes from the show

• Don't Waste Buildings on LinkedIn (the best starting point)
• The Don't Waste Buildings holding page (a proper website is imminent, so keep an eye on www.dontwastebuildings.com)
• Will Hurst on LinkedIn
• Leanne Tritton on LinkedIn
• Richard Nelson on LinkedIn
• Zero Ambitions - Construction's embodied carbon problem: how do we incentivise retrofit over 'demolish and rebuild', with Joseph Kilroy (CIOB)
• The AJ article by Kunle Barker that Will refers to: Without architects’ close expert involvement, government plans to retrofit millions of homes will be prone to unintended consequences such as mould
• Something about that 'burning fossil fuels to save the planet' nonsense that Jeff was referring to Future Energy Scenarios 2023 Released, sadly he couldn't find the actual article he remembered
• He found this as well: Ability of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to generate negative emissions
• The Indy Johar LinkedIn post that Will refers to
• LRB's James Butler article about Grenfell: ‘This much evidence, still no charges’

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
We don't actually earn anything from this, and it's quite a lot of work, so we have to promote the day jobs.

• Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn page (we still don't have a proper website)
• Jeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - [email protected]; Everything is User Experience
• Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
• Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon Upfront
• Join ACAN
• Join the AECB
• Join the IGBC
• Check out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women

**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION...

A long-overdue episode with friend of the show, Lloyd Alter, about a blog he wrote and his book "The Story of Upfront Carbon".

We get into the language of sustainability, carbon, and lots of the words that are ubiquitous in this space (sustainability and the built environment, obviously).

We get into the sustainability of travel, to some extent too,

Lloyd's book: The Story of Upfront Carbon: How a Life of Just Enough Offers a Way Out of the Climate Crisis

• Buy it from the independent bookshop website (you can switch regions)
• You can also buy it from Amazon, but only if you really have no other option

InnovateUK – Net Zero Heat Open Day
A showcase of IUK innovation lab projects including Transform-ER

• Thursday 3rd October, online, 9am-12pm
• Register here

Notes from the show

• "Sustainable design is dead, long live regenerative design!" from Lloyd's Substack, Upfront Carbon
• A sustainable architecture Google Images search
• A regenerative architecture Google Images search
• That absurd vertical forest building in Milan
• COP26: Sufficiency Should be First - Yamina Saheb
• We Have to Put Sufficiency First in a Low-Carbon World - Lloyd's old Treehugger blog about the SER framework
• ZAP episode 144 - “Use less stuff”: embodied carbon, value chains, and the potential for change in the Declaration de Chaillot. With Lloyd Alter (Carbon Upfront), Kelly Alvarez Doran (Ha/f Climate Design), and Will Arnold (The Institution of Structural Engineers)

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
We don't actually earn anything from this, and it's quite a lot of work, so we have to promote the day jobs.

• Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn page (we still don't have a proper website)
• Jeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - [email protected]; Everything is User Experience
• Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
• Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon Upfront
• Join ACAN
• Join the AECB
• Join the IGBC
• Check out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women

**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

People off the telly don't tend to know the first thing about sustainability, let alone possess a properly anoraky understanding of the subject, but Charlie Luxton is different.

Jeff and Alex spoke to Charlie about his approach to sustainability, how to communicate about the benefits of sustainability, asking more questions to our clients, and about the state of architectural education, among other things.

For those who, like Jeff, have been living under a rock these past 20 years, Charlie Luxton has presented numerous shows across British TV, including Building the Dream, Homes by the Sea and Impossible Builds (More 4), World's Wierdest Homes, SuperCommuters, Best Laid Plans (Channel 4), Modern British Architects (Channel 5), Britain’s Hidden Heritage (BBC 1), Restored to Glory and Rebuilding The Past (BBC 2), Homes and Property (ITV) and The Great Treehouse Challenge (Sky Living).

Charlie and his wife Kate Luxton also run an architectural practice, Charlie Luxton Design, whose work seems to be annoyingly well conceived.

Kudos to Grace Fraser from heat recovery ventilation supplier Airflow for connecting Jeff and Charlie.

Notes from the episode

• Salk Insitute: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/louis-kahn-salk-institute
• Ditchley park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditchley_Park
• The Camden project Jeff mentions: https://passivehouseplus.ie/news/design-approaches/study-extreme-overheating-not-reflected-in-building-simulations
• Charlie's house - https://charlieluxtondesign.com/charlie-builds-house/
• Charlie Luxton Design's office, Black Barn Studios: https://charlieluxtondesign.com/buildings/black-barn-studios/
• Airthings - Internal air quality monitoring: https://www.airthings.com/en-gb/
• Skipton Building society's carbon profiling of its building portfolio: https://www.skipton.co.uk/about-us/our-environment
• Charlie's Cornish holiday home: https://www.granddesignsmagazine.com/self-build/charlie-luxton/
• Helen Macarthur Foundation: https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/
• RHS Malvern garden built from waste materials: https://charlieluxtondesign.com/rhs-malvern/

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
We don't actually earn anything from this, and it's quite a lot of work, so we have to promote the day jobs.

• Zero Ambitions Partners email address - [email protected]
• Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
• Email Alex and Dan about user research, websites, and communications - [email protected]; Everything is User Experience
• Join ACAN
• Join the AECB
• Join the IGBC
• Listen to Accelerate to Zero, Sara's podcast produced at BE-ST, on Apple or Spotify

**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

This week, Jeff, Alex and Dan are joined by Dr. Peter Rickaby, a man who should need little introduction to those who know the sector well, and to the listeners of our podcast, he's been on twice before.

To those less familiar with him, he's an expert in the sector, who's devoted a career to improving energy efficiency in the built environment in the UK with a particular interest in retrofit.

This week, rather than talk about a particular piece of work or technology, we wanted to talk about a slightly more esoteric subject: who can you trust? In other words, how difficult is to know what to do about anything. It's something we talk about amongst ourselves a lot, and presumably you our listeners find yourselves talking about much the same.

The challenge here can probably be best summed up by the endless heat pump debate, in which we're asked to often hold two contradictory and correct positions at the same time: every home can be heated by a heat pump vs. not every home is suitable for a heat pump. We thought Peter would be a great person to talk about it because of the length and breadth of his experience, and he's a great speaker.

We took in the housing market, heat pumps, hydrogen, retrofit, snake oil and more. In spite of our conversational meandering and rambling, we did actually manage to come up with, albeit a very short list, of people that we do think you can actually trust. Anyway, we hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
We don't actually earn anything from this, and it's quite a lot of work, so we have to promote the day jobs.

• Zero Ambitions Partners email address - [email protected]
• Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
• Join ACAN
• Join the AECB
• Join the IGBC
• Listen to Accelerate to Zero, Sara's podcast produced at BE-ST, on Apple or Spotify
• Email Alex and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - [email protected]; Everything is User Experience

**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**