Join our Sustainability Forum on 30 March for our next sustainability mastermind session.
At this mastermind event Mark Siddall, co-chair of the Sustainable Futures Forum, will present the award-winning, RIBA Awards shortlisted Shepherd's Barn.
This modest one and a half storey home, nestled in a valley at the edge of Lanchester, County Durham, is not just the North East’s first certified Passivhaus retrofit (a standard known as EnerPHit), but an EnerPHit PLUS, which means it generates more energy than it needs to operate.
The barn conversion not only satisfies the measured 2030 Operational Energy requirements of the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge but also satisfies the 2030 Whole Life Carbon criteria.
Monitoring shows that owners Paul and Sony have achieved energy independence, which means they have fuel security and are buffered from rising fuel prices. In fact, Shepherds Barn is not just a bill-free home it actually pays you to live there.
Please note this event will not be recorded, so if you want to learn about how to design a high-performance building, attendance is a necessity.
There are five ways you can benefit from the sustainability mastermind:
1) Community: Through the sustainability mastermind you get the opportunity to be a part of a community with shared goals. To this end, you’ll have the chance to create new relationships and new friendships. Who knows where that can lead…
2) Challenge: Together we engage head-on with the RIBA 2030 Challenge. We discuss how it can be applied to your project – whether or not you expect to address all criteria – and we help each other prepare for the RIBA Awards by addressing technical queries or agreeing common understandings.
3) Learning: We all start somewhere, so the sustainability mastermind recognises that not everyone has a project they want to share, or the expertise to contribute. If you want to sit on the sidelines soaking up all the good ideas and developing new insights that you can apply in your work the next day then that’s perfectly fine. The most important thing is that you are interested, stimulated and willing to engage.
4) Development: If you are already an expert in a specific field of sustainable design then you’ll be all too aware that you can’t master them all. The sustainability mastermind helps you fill the gaps by bolstering those underdeveloped areas.
5) Practice: With your practice’s blessing you bring a project, part of a project, or even just a construction detail, to the mastermind. You set out the context, where you are right now and where you’d like to get to. No scheme is too big, and no detail is too small – the mastermind is here to help.
These sessions will be held under the Chatham House rules. Participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, or project may be revealed. This way everyone taking part can learn without risk. The more you contribute the more you’ll get out of the experience.
If you have a project in mind for peer review at this session then please get in touch with Mark Siddall or Adam Vaughan in advance.
As an inter-architect and inter-practice event, the sustainability mastermind is a truly unique experience. We look forward to seeing you.
