The building industry has a huge impact in the context of carbon emissions, energy consumption and climate change. Whilst ‘adaptive reuse’ has become a buzzword with louder calls for upgrading, renovating and converting existing buildings instead of creating more new buildings, a culture of demolition persists.

With new-build being seen as an easier way to meet increasingly demanding regulations, how can we really improve the overall performance of our built environment if we don’t address the inefficiencies and wastage associated with the dated fabric of our existing building stock throughout the nation? Equally, do we truly value the qualities that existing buildings offer: embodied energy, cultural memory, material richness, spatial character and social continuity?

With the architecture and construction industries consumed by chasing accreditations, tick-box targets and marketable metrics, we should ask ourselves whether the criteria by which we measure how well a building performs is too narrow in scope?

Understandably there is a great deal of importance placed upon ‘being green’ and being good on (that other curious term) ‘sustainability’. But what if a high-performance building with progressive material credentials, also creates problems in other areas such as furthering social inequality? What happens when causing environmental harm is considered to be more nuanced than the notion of artificial buildings sat within a natural world?

A building’s very existence has implications and consequences. Whilst some will benefit others can become disadvantaged. Should its performance then be deemed to be purely a technical issue, or do we need to consider what else it is doing be that locally, communally, socially, economically, politically, culturally, historically, naturally, emotionally, psychologically, metaphysically?

How Performative is Building Performance?

Speakers:

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Tickets:

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