Alasdair Young

Buro Happold

28/06/2012 Written by: Rachel Davies No comments

Alasdair leads our sustainability team in London and has worked at Buro Happold since 2005.

How many in the team?

14 including myself and five PHD students

What are you working on currently?

Tottenham Hotspur Football stadium – we’re looking at the energy efficiency of the site. The client and the local Mayor want to make sure the stadium has a low energy rating.

So what are we suggesting?

Well we’re looking at Smart technologies and on site renewable energy sources.

What sort of thing?

We’re assessing comfort and conditions for spectators, how to adapt the stadium to work more efficiently on non match days, lighting that responds to movement and the air quality.

So are you a football fan?

No not really ¬– I’m more of a rugby fan. Football wise my team are Kilmarnock – they play in the Scottish Premier League. However I’m currently supporting Spurs!

What else is the team up to?

Well we’ve got lots going on. We have a BREEAM assessment of the Sochi Winter Olympics to complete and are designing an innovative roof on Samba Bank HQ in Saudi.

An innovative roof? What does that involve?

This is a project we’re working on with Fosters + Partners. We’re going to use waste cooling from the building along with solar panels to provide energy. It’s a first for roof innovation.

You mentioned you had five PHD students?

Yes we do. They have come from Brunel, Loughborough and Bristol Universities and they’re working on some really cool research projects.

Like what?

One person is looking at behaviours, i.e. how people react to the buildings in which they work or live or play.

That sounds interesting...

Yes from our research we’ve seen that you can design the most efficient building possible but unless people know how to use or to get the best from it, it will never fulfil its efficiency potential.

What else?

Another student is looking at retrofitting a 1950’s house to Passivhaus standards. Another is looking at the embodied carbon of buildings, starting right at the beginning of the process looking at construction materials and specifications.

These PHDs really add value

Yes, they do. They add so much to our knowledge – we’re able to introduce cutting edge technologies and methodologies into our work and we hopefully then recruit the students into the business.

What’s the future for sustainability do you think?

Well the UK government is trying to incentivise business in their new “Green Deal” package by providing loans to finance energy improvements. Unfortunately I think the interest rates will be too high to make it viable.

What would you suggest then?

I think there should be more mechanisms in place for landlords – domestic and non domestic – to be able to improve their buildings. The government should then give them a tax break. That would be a good start.

And as our energy sources run dry – then what?

We need to integrate and combine all energies; there is not a single source that could fulfil our energy demands. We then also go back to behaviours... looking at how we convert energy, use and move it to the best advantage. I think we’ll see massive improvements to our buildings but this needs to be done in conjunction with teaching people how to work with their buildings.

If you were able to work on any project at all what would it be?

I’d really love to work on a large energy city, designing cyclical infrastructure whereby any waste that is generated supplies another system and so on. It’s called Industrial Ecology – it’s been done in Denmark in a place called “Kalundborg”.