Architype

I was recently asked by Alfonso Senatore, the founder of the Ongreening web platform to present our work at the University of East Anglia Enterprise Centre building as part of a 4-day seminar programme focused on Green Building and the Green Economy, hosted by OnGreening at SAIE in Bologna, Italy.

Other speakers in the programme included Arup, the BRE, and the WELL Institute.

My talk focused on our lifecycle and carbon analysis work at The Enterprise Centre and explored how material selection had been influenced by lifecycle modelling and impacts. This included a review of our Rapiere web application that has been developed with ChapmanBDSP, Currie & Brown and GreenspaceLive. Rapiere enables rapid optioneering of specification options from a lifecycle cost, energy and carbon perspective.

It was great to meet Alfonso’s team in Italy and get an insight into the developing use of international environmental certification standards such as BREEAM and LEED, particularly within unique historic contexts.

One of the unexpected highlights of the visits was walking across the Ponte di Stalingrado bridge between the historic city centre and the exhibition centre in the suburbs where SAIE was located. This unloved piece of concrete infrastructure, with mean narrow pavements, was in the process of being transformed into something beautiful through a street art project called ‘100 muri diversi’ created by artists Roberto Morgantini and Danil Masotti.

This wonderful grass roots initiative where the artists had worked alongside volunteers had enlivened the low level concrete barriers – previously covered in tags – with an unfolding sequence of colourful co-created imagery.