Thomas, who is HSSP Architects’ Sustainability Expert, headed to Hereford for the AECB Annual Conference on 30 September 2022.

The AECB is the Association for Environment Conscious Building which was established in 1989, and this event focused on ‘Building for the Future’ with practical solutions to decarbonising buildings at the fore.

There were talks, groups to tour and review the assemblies, exhibits and mock-ups, and to formulate topics for discussion to gain a deep and detailed understanding of sustainable building and full and partial retrofit. Group seminars covered a range of topics including embodied carbon calculations, building physics and sustainable structural engineering.

Approaches that offer the most potential to deliver low energy and healthy buildings at scale were covered, as was minimising the use of natural resources and impact on the environment.

An interesting structural design combined with advanced IT, lighting and carbon management systems were present in the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering Centre for Advanced Timber Technology (NMITE CATT) which the group got to tour.

The conference itself was held in the Shell Store building which is a former WWI and WWII ordnance storage building which has since been converted into an incubation centre. It is fascinating to see its regeneration and how the conversion has been done. There are traces of its history; impressions of the shells are in the original asphalt floor and tracks are still in situ that were used for moving the ordinance around on winches.

It was a very interesting and worthwhile event which Thomas would highly recommend.

By HSSP Architects