Sustainability in Architecture
Claremont Residence designed by Cast Studio. Photo by Jack Lovel.
A large part of changing our name to Cast Studio came from a desire to express the importance of community to our practice, whether that be the creative community within our office, our wider local communities, or the global community.
With this in mind, sustainability is obviously crucial to our vision for how we practice and what we create – communities don’t exist on a dead planet.
As signatories to Architects Declare, we know architecture and the built environment is unfortunately playing an ongoing role in the climate and biodiversity crisis. Globally, buildings and construction play a major part of the problem, accounting for nearly 40% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions whilst also having a significant impact on our natural habitats. The production of concrete alone is the single biggest producer of industrial carbon emissions.
Within our own offices this is the reason we are an audited carbon negative business that actively seeks opportunities for reuse, reduction and recycling. We don’t think recycled business cards, fair trade toilet paper and office ‘keep cups’ will save the world on their own, but we do think that every business owes it to their staff, customers, children and community to make changes towards sustainable practice.
In our architecture, meanwhile, we embed sustainable thinking in our projects from briefing and concept design through to documentation and contract administration. We can’t make every project entirely carbon neutral (although we are proud that some of them are) but we can certainly educate clients and encourage decisions that create better performing buildings that use less resources, perform better, and last longer. We actively encourage clients to obtain a life cycle assessment as part of the design process, for example, as a way of understanding the environmental impact that something like a house extension can have, and the ways that its performance and procurement can be improved.