A community centre made of recycled toilet bowls will go up against a naturally ventilated library and a “zero carbon” refurbishment of a 1980s office block, in this year’s competition for the UK’s best new building. As the country swelters in 40C heat, many people are looking at architecture’s role in the climate crisis and how intelligent design can help to reduce carbon emissions, while keeping occupants comfortable in increasingly extreme conditions.
The RIBA Stirling prize contender with the loudest boast of green credentials is 100 Liverpool Street, the transformation by Hopkins Architects of a Big Bang-era office block at Broadgate in the City of London. Where once stood a power-dressed fortress of trading floors clad in pink granite (which campaigners tried desperately to save), there now sprawls a corpulent black blob of flexible workspace and shops, its curving flanks wrapped entirely with glass. It’s not the prettiest thing on the list, but its developer, British Land, claims that it has achieved “net zero carbon” by reusing a third of the original building’s steel frame, as well as half of its concrete.
Look at the small print, however, and you will find that the net zero claim is backed up by offsetting the emissions elsewhere on the planet: paying for vast land restoration and tree planting schemes in Tibet and Mexico. The sheer amount of floor-to-ceiling glazing makes you wonder how hard the air conditioning will have been working this week – and how long it might be before the building is retrofitted with something akin to the previous sun-shading granite fins.
