Oban’s Corran Halls yesterday (12th February) saw a presentation and get together of all of those involved in the inaugural Sustainable Design Awards 2009 promoted by the Argyll and Bute Sustainable Design Forum.
Present – and actively engaged in a lively and thoughtful discussion on sustainable design – were the Forum’s Chair, Councillor Ron Simon – who chaired the event; Paul Convery, Planning Development Officer and the other key driver of the Forum; members of the judging panel for the main awards; architects; their clients; owners of the winning properties; senior Council staff; Councillors Elaine Robertson and Neil Mackay; and ForArgyll, media partner for the 2009 Awards and sponsor of the People’s Choice Awards, decided by online voting.
Trophies were presented to the recipients of the principal judged awards.
- The winner of the New-build Non-residential category (public buildings) was, as previously announced, St Moluag’s Heritage Museum on the Isle of Lismore, designed by architect, Shauna Cameron.
Commended by the judges was a second finalist in the New-build Non-residential Category (public buildings):
- Portavadie Marina.
Commended also were two finalists in the Small Scale Residential Category (largely private houses):
- Alt-an-Duin, Kilmory, Achnamara
- Tir nan Og on Islay’s Mull of Oa.
Certificates awarded by ForArgyll to the winners of the People’s Choice Awards went to:
- Alt-an-Duin (Small Scale Residential Category)
- Silverhills Cottages, Rosneath (Large Scale Residential Category – essentially social housing)
- St Moluag’s Heritage Museum, Lismore (New-build, Non-residential Category).
The ForArgyll Special Award went to Brian Stewart of Brian Stewart Associates, the architect of Portavadie Marina, which, lacking a community to back it energetically in the online vote, was disadvantaged in that contest.
We felt that the merit of the building, its potential contribution to the economy of the Cowal peninsula and the absolute engagement of its architect in its concept and delivery merited this recognition.
Sustainability
With a dash from the Government’s Scottish Local Newspaper Summit in Glasgow in the morning, ForArgyll could not avoid missing part of this discussion – but points heard brought complex and challenging issues which are interesting to confront and which reflected well on the insights, experience and positivity of the participants.
Issues raised included:
- Why consider building long life-expectancy buildings when technology and sustainable building materials are changing so quickly? But how does the financial and environmental cost of more frequent demolition and rebuilding stack up here? Argyll & Bute Council’s new school campuses are built to a 30 year life expectancy and the pay back time of their PFI (Private Finance Initiative) financing will also take 30 years. This raises issues that require to be openly informed and widely addressed.
- Can a design be described as ‘sustainable’ if it is not affordable? Paul Convery feels strongly that sustainability is about sustaining communities and sustaining the presence of young working people in Argyll.
- Does sustainability include the concept of a once-and-for-all house built to accommodate from the cradle to the grave? There are people who want to live out their days in the family home. Moving house is measured as one of the biggest areas of stress, impacting most strongly on the elderly.
- What are the views on the 40 square metre living units or ‘pods’ that some developers are presenting for planning consent on some local authority areas – as the answer to affordable accommodation? There are varied views on this. Ours is to look at appropriate licensing of alternative lifestyles which can offer the young and the poor real space to live in. (We’ll be returning to this issue shortly.) Well-being and behavioural patterns do not respond constructively to confinement.
- Do Building Regulations have to be universal? Architect Laurence Jacobson instanced the case of 3-storey town houses – which require the installation of a lift for disabled access. He asked if regulations could not develop the flexibility to require a specific percentage of houses in a development to be equipped with such facilities. As things stand, all such houses have to conform to such a specification – putting their unit price out of range of many would-be buyers.
- Does the pace of arrival of new Building Regulations have to be so dizzyingly fast? It is time consuming and distracting for architects to keep up with the current rate of change. Can the pace not be slowed? Paul Convery suggested that the Planners would look at slowing the pace of change where possible and of giving architects and builders long-term advance warning of issues around which new regulations are being developed.
- Is the heart of sustainability about sustaining community living? This is interesting because it is a question that has almost exclusive resonance in rural areas.
- (Update 15th February – this information has been supplied by Fergus Murray, Planning Development Manager for Argyll and Bute Council. It relates to parts of the discussion which took place before we arrived.) There is a synergy to be developed more productively between the growing demand for wood fuel, the prevalence of timber-frame in construction in Argyll and the high percentage of Scotland’s forest estate held by Argyll. Two suggestions emerged from this discussion. One was to develop better local processing and use of wood for fuel – a suitable use of the largely Sitka Spruce timber grown in Argyll’s woodlands. The second suggestion was to investigate the growing of alternative types of timber which could be used in the local construction industry.
The debate was in many ways both provocative – challenging previously uninterrogated assumptions and demonstrative of the positive value of getting all parties to the development of the built environment present in the same room.
There are conversations and collaborations here that would reward all concerned – and Argyll at large.
The photographs at the top of this article show:
- top row from the left: St Moluag’s Heritage Museum, Lismore; Portavadie Marina, Cowal.
- bottom row from the left: Silverhills Cottages, Rosneath; Alt-an-Duin, Kilmory, Achnamara; Tir nan Og, Mull of Oa, Islay.