![]() We demolish around 50,000 buildings each year in Britain, which accounts for more than 60 per cent of our nation’s waste. This goes hand-in-hand with specifying materials and building systems that are environmentally responsible. Our initial thinking also centres on how we can use the least amount of materials necessary to achieve our design and structural objectives. The practice often undertakes studies for clients at Stage 1, assessing the viability of Modern Methods of Construction, including prefabricated modules and panelised building elements, which can steer projects in a certain direction. Ideally, we focus on material selection as early as possible. When and how do you focus on material selection during design projects? And if we do find something that we think is important, or a particularly good product, we try to make sure that it is taken forward into future projects where its use and design language can be further refined. It’s really important that we don’t end up in silos we want a cross pollination of ideas, thinking, and knowledge between projects and teams. ![]() The practice has technical reviews that ensure learning is shared between projects. How do you share knowledge learned in this area? The aim is create exemplar buildings in terms of sustainability and circularity. The practice’s Mæ Zero team, which is responsible for researching and identifying products and materials, as well as developing technical solutions and details to help us deliver circular and zero carbon buildings, manages the library, Added to this, each design team makes its own contribution to material research. It’s rather better managed than ours and the intention is that we will be able to contribute to it over time. Alongside this, our landlord and neighbour Allies and Morrison has kindly extended us the use of their library which is located in the basement of this building. We also have project boxes, which tend to reside with their respective design teams and contain a mix of different project-specific items. The library is essentially a legacy of materials that we like and may want to reuse, organised by material palettes or types. How do you organise and manage the library? Research, application, evaluation and dissemination are central to this approach – undertakings that extend to and inform material selection, as Ely explains. The latter is particularly important to the team, whose ambition is to produce exemplary buildings that not only support the circular economy but also further environmental understanding and know-how. Founded in 2001 by Alex Ely, the office’s guiding design principles revolve around social inclusivity, spatial inventiveness, and sustainability. “The company has now signed an agreement with Hamilton’s Waste & Recycling to produce the K-Briq on site at the recycling centre, thus cutting carbon emissions and transport miles.Located in the heart of Southwark, London, Mæ is an award-winning practice specialising in housing, health and care, and social infrastructure projects. We hope Kenoteq will be part of those homes.” “The Scottish government has set very high targets for housebuilding with 50,000 new homes earmarked for construction in the next three years. In the past year, we’ve produced thousands of bricks and put them through rigorous testing, with the K-Briq now commercially available to construction clients.” “The K-Briq looks like a normal brick, weighs the same and behaves like a clay brick, but offers better insulation properties.”ĭr Sam Chapman, a colleague of Medero at Kenoteq, adds, “Kenoteq was invested in machinery that can produce three million bricks per year. The amount of waste they produce is not sustainable long-term.” “I have spent many years researching building materials and have been concerned that modern construction technique exploits raw materials without considering that they are amongst the largest contributors to carbon emissions. ![]() “We hope K-Briq will support the sustainability ambitions of today’s construction industry,” Medero says in a statement. The idea was invented over a decade ago by Heriot-Watt’s Professor Gabriela Medero and is Kenoteq’s very first product. Kenoteq, a Scottish, spin-off company from Heriot-Watt University, has launched its sustainable building brick made from 90 percent construction waste coined, the K-Briq. Exhibitions, Associations & Information.Ceilings, Internal Wall Materials & Partitioning. ![]()
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