Brian Murphy, founder of NGS, GreenSpec and GreenBuildingEncyclopaedia, architect, seasoned professional specification writer, offers his views on the Future Cities Adaptation Compass tool and Map Table, demonstrated at the project programme’s concluding conference. Prompted by the programme, he offers thoughts on the need for climate and adaptation thinking, with guidance on governance in development control or tighter specification, to be much better integrated into the capability and capacity building of architects, and why this matters.

As a student of construction and architecture thirty something years ago, I learned nothing to prepare me for the climate catastrophe we face, now and in the coming decades. The vast majority of my profession spend 98% of the time with the head in a computer churning out the next legal but climate-inadequate design or working drawings and specifications. 35 hours a year must be dedicated to continuing professional development and they need only do 2 hours (0.1%) on climate and sustainable architecture.

In contrast a trusted work colleague and architect has just completed a PhD in urban heat island effect, says she does not yet have the detailed understanding to apply it in architectural practice, plenty of theories and ideas but no practical experience or evidence based know-how, this will come in the following decades if she decides to specialize, advise us and we have enough time left to benefit.

In the last 5 years I have seen a few relevant publications by concerned parties, local authorities, regional bodies
and government departments bringing climate issues to our attention and I make a point of asking as many audiences as I can for a show of hands ‘who has heard of, read or acted upon any of the publications described by the previous speaker?’ One librarian is brave enough to show her hand, exceptionally a few hands, my students of architecture might just know more than my profession.

Future Cities part funded the sustainable design elements of the build of Sussex Exchange 6, the venue of the Future Cities conference. Its aspirations were high, and it wears its green roof well. But sadly the building suffered all the usual value engineering (posh for ‘cost-cutting’) specification substitution exercises that our industry habitually engages in to revert to ‘business as usual’. The story about why various of the ambitious (‘dark green’ specification) features failed to materialize is a valuable and important story to be shared. This is not about finger pointing and embarrassment, but about critical thinking and learning for the future. It’s about rethinking, and adjusting training and development generically to gear up the design and build process to ensure ‘compromise’ (in the trade ‘green’ specs are downgraded to ‘violet’) is minimised.

Learning and Specification software

I know from training staff in use of specification software that most learn haphazardly, inconsistently, in comprehensively and learn in one context and apply the learning in another context inappropriately without question. I agree specification is a task most hate, but that is no excuse, we need to develop competence in all our activities. In support of my colleagues I have been writing specifications, sustainability checklists (1800 reads – in two years) and ‘jargon busters’ (395 pages and 15,000 reads in 2 years) for a few decades now. This is to try to help them ease their way into environmental and sustainable construction. These have proved popular and so are being recreated on green building encyclopaedia website.

Urban Heat Island effect is in there, but I rarely hear architects engaging with the issue let alone proposing solutions to it; and engineers just pop in air conditioning. I think we are all waiting for sophisticated software with all the answers, and over optimistically hail Building Information Modeling as the holy grail that will help us to ‘remake the industry in novel, but desperately needed, ways; transforming an adversarial self-serving Construction Industry into a low cost, low carbon Built Environment industry that sustainably serves society’ (Paul Fletcher Beyond BIM 2012).

So how do we engage with climate change?

Public consultation and community engagement bring dread to designers, are objected to or reluctantly engaged with by developers. They expect and fear the meeting will be about the community arguing with the designer/developer and reduce to loudest voices taking over the meeting and little will be gained, very few see them as a means to collect client requirements to inform the brief.

6 www.seachangesussex.co.uk
7 Jargon Buster Rev 30 265 pages. 2011: Free if you register. (See also Rev 49, 451 Pages, 2015 £4.88)

I also see architects who carried out their desks study with 1:5000 scale maps or aerial photos, pinning up their drawings, poetically announcing their philosophical approach to the design and effectively asking ‘Do you like my architecture?’ Most of the audience cannot understand a word, cannot read drawings nor imagine what is on offer, and they just want to know what have you done to provide safe places for my kids to play in, where are the schools and shops.