Live Project Conclusion:
Our six week project has finally come to an end and was presented to our peers last Friday. Throughout the project we consulted with representatives of the professions and people involved in the redevelopment/reconstruction of The City School. The following parties were consulted:
HLM Architects
Sheffield City Council
Taylor Woodrow Construction
Andrew Beard (CABE)
Nick Parsons (Heeley City – Farm Energy Centre)
The City School (Ken Dunn, Marion Milroy, other staff members.)
Consulting these people enabled us to better appreciate the scope of issues across the spectrum of groups and individuals involved in the project. This also helped us to identify the range of roles within the BSF programme and to establish where sustainability could be better implemented within the process.
Although these meetings revealed a level of professional criticism between the consulted parties, there were some common factors that showed us where sustainability could be implemented more effectively in the process of school design. Interestingly all professional parties agreed that ‘sustainability’ should not be seen as an additional and separate entity; it was even suggested that the term ‘sustainability’ almost becomes redundant due to the need for an inherently sustainable approach in design. It was unanimously agreed that sustainability should be completely integrated with standard design practice and not be an additional consideration to tick boxes or achieve particular ‘green’ credentials. Unfortunately this can only be seen an ideal scenario and is not currently standard practice.
Our consultation with BSF stakeholders suggested that in order to integrate an ethos of sustainability in school design, a proactive ‘champion’ within the school’s project team is required to insist on a holistic consideration of sustainability in design and construction. Without a champion there is little incentive for the design team to undertake the extra measures and costs associated with developing a sustainable design. Without a champion the design team would be more likely to focus on a design agenda set by the architect or contractor. Furthermore, it was agreed that the earlier an agenda for sustainability is identified, the greater the chance of this agenda succeeding and not succumb to the inevitable onslaught of value engineering.
With this in mind, we set about developing the brief. We decided that we should produce an information resource aimed at head teachers and school staff members. This resource would provide information about the process to be undertaken during the development of the design for a new/redeveloped school, and introduce the various principles of sustainability. This resource would be interactive and accessible to make its use as easy and convenient as possible. The resource would also be editable and expandable to respond to the ever changing terms, processes and procedures. Therefore we decided this should be an online resource that would also enable us to create links to other existing documentation available on the internet.
Live Project Outcome – Website
The last couple of weeks of the project were a combination of compiling the research we’d already covered, researching additional areas the website was to include, and formatting all this data to create the website. The website interface is based on a sketchpad, alluding to the need for early incorporation of sustainable principles in the design development. This was also intended to establish the site as being a user-friendly resource for the masses; being brief, to the point and jargon-free.
As far as satisfying the brief is concerned, the live project team members consider the website to have different levels of success. While it does not in itself answer our client’s ultimate brief (the provision of zero carbon secondary school) we feel that the website provides our client and others in a similar situation a tool-kit to empower them within the design process to campaign for sustainable design at a very early stage. Therefore, as the brief was particularly undefined we felt we had an opportunity to make a broader impact the process than a simple intervention at the City School. However, in addition to this goal that we set for ourselves, through our consultation with school staff and students we feel we also succeeded in developing awareness of the need for sustainability in design and lifestyles throughout the school community.
Following the production of the majority of the content of the website we approached some of the staff members at The City School for feedback. Apart from pointing out a few glaring spelling and grammar errors (naturally expected of teachers) the site was well received. So what now: Our aim is to publicise the website to the other 12 schools involved in the next wave of BSF in Sheffield. We intended to do this by sending a number of postcards to the schools involved, the local authority and to the various companies and professionals involved in procuring these projects. Furthermore we are invited to attend a conference in London regarding sustainability in schools and to a ‘wicked waste’ event in Sheffield. We intend to seek funding for the website, allowing it to be developed further and to become infinitely informative, resourceful and influential. We believe that BeSustainableFool.co.uk has the potential to become incredibly successful and will empower school teachers and staff to positively influence the design of their new schools.
www.besustainablefool.co.uk
