Architecture Week - Sustainable Development

With the advent of this year’s architecture week it is no surprise to find that the notion of sustainable development is dominating the discussion. Commercial and residential buildings are said to account for almost 50% of carbon emissions in the UK, and in the rush to reduce the collective carbon footprint, architects are increasingly becoming as implicated as airlines. But ten years ago, Ian McKay and partner Duncan Baker Brown were minority voices when they set up BBM Sustainable Design. I speak to McKay and ask him to cut through the jargon and tell me what it all actually means. “Sustainable development is quite simply about living within the ecological capacity of the planet”, he says. “The problem is that where the Government has drawn up definitions it has usually been in terms of active power sources - putting solar panels on or wind turbines - but that’s not the whole picture”. So is it really possible to create a carbon neutral development? “Whatever you build will have an impact on the environment but we have to think about the way we live within it if we really want to reduce that impact.” For McKay one of the answers lies in keeping it local. “We’ve always believed in sourcing local products in order to reduce route miles but increasingly we’ve become interested in translating the landscape into the architecture - returning the natural materials into their original source”. This week there will be the chance to view some of their most successful developments to date in a retrospective exhibition which runs until the end of the month. ER