Design for Future Climate - PassivOffice at Devonshire Gate

Gale & Snowden has been involved over the last 2 years in a very exciting project in Devon to design a new build office development built to Passivhaus Certified standards. The project has received funding from the Technology Strategy Board for the team to analyse predicted future weather and create design strategies so that the development is ready for a changing climate. 

The team has been able to come up with a series of future climate change adaptation strategies, some of which can be introduced at the beginning of the project, others can be included in the future as part of an ongoing adaptation strategy for example in an ongoing maintenance cycle.  The study has shown that it is possible, by employing sound building physics and being aware of the extent of future climate change and how this will affect the building and its users, to design solutions into the project so that the building can perform well into the future without the need for costly remedial works such as air conditioning and that this can be achieved at no or limited costs to the project.

As part of the dissemination process we are pleased to post our final design for future climate research report with this blog entry. The dissemination process will be an ongoing one and we would welcome comments and feedback on the work we have done and perhaps collaboration with future projects.

Gale & Snowden’s Passivhaus by the sea in North Devon, nears completion.

The all-glass, west-facing, sea-facing façade and timber cladding are now installed. Panoramic sea views and cool evening sea breezes await our clients when they move in this autumn.

Gale & Snowden presents Building Biology initiative at AECB conference

Building Biology UK

Gale & Snowden Architects presented their Building Biology initiative at the AECB conference on 12th July 2013. The following is the text that introduced the workshop at the AECB conference, followed by a copy of the presentation. If you would like to find out more about this initiative or are interested in Building Biology or healthy building please contact us on info@ecodesign.co.uk.

An introduction to Building Biology and Ecology – Healthy by Design

Presented by David Gale, Director Gale & Snowden Architects

"The workshop I am proposing to lead at the AECB conference 2013 will be primarily an introduction to the key concepts and principles of Building Biology & Ecology, as I understand them.

I originally trained as a Biologist, attending an Applied Biological Science degree, but for some reason ended up becoming an Architect. I set up Gale & Snowden Architects over 20 years ago because basically I didn’t like the way architecture was being practiced – creating environments that people didn’t necessarily want, highly polluting, resource depleting and particularly unhealthy on many levels. I also believed in my naivety that we could combat climate change............ above all I wanted to investigate and design systems that combined biology and architecture to produce healthy environments, where humans are intentionally designed as participants in nature – actively co-evolving the whole system – people becoming  part of a designed self perpetuating ecosystem – some people call this approach Regenerative Design.

The workshop I am proposing will be a combination of a summary of a building biology practitioner's course and what we have been up to at Gale & Snowden over the last 20 odd years."

David's presentation is available to download here.