Sustainable Design
sustainability in our buildings
Our approach to sustainable design is to integrate low-cost, high impact measures at the outset of the proposals to avoid costly, less-effective ‘bolt-ons’ at a later stage.
We demonstrate a ‘Fabric First’ approach to the design and specification of a building to reduce the requirement for heating and cooling, and aim to evaluate and quantify the benefits of differing environmental solutions at feasibility stage, through the use of environmental analysis software, to establish the most effective building solution by considering site layout, building fabric and renewable energy sources and technologies.
in our client’s words
“At the beginning of the project we sat down with LSI to ask some very quick ‘what if’ questions, to see what the implications were for the life cycle costing. Our U-Value targets became secondary to finding out what actually the best value for the building was. We estimated that in that afternoon around the table we saved £750,000…a good afternoon’s work!”
Senior Estates Project Manager, UEA
environmental design assessment
LSI Architects possesses a wealth of experience of undertaking the process to achieve BREEAM and SKA accreditations on projects across a range of sectors. Working in combination with environmental evaluation tools and our in-house sustainable design guide, there can be substantial value in undertaking a formal
sustainable design assessment, such as BREEAM or SKA.
Both of these processes are an investment in formalising the project goals into measurable and certifiable outcomes to demonstrate a commitment to sustainable design at all levels.
a sustainable practice
We are conscious of the role the construction industry needs to play in mitigating future environmental degradation and so the practice is a part of the Architects Declare movement, a campaign led by the UK’s leading Architectural Practices to take action on the twin crises of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss, the most serious issue of our time.
We operate an integrated Environmental Management System to our ISO 14001:2015 accreditation by BSI and we regard compliance with current environmental legislation as a minimum level of performance.
