Architecture for Change

Any AfC revenue is used to disseminate and share our research, knowledge and expertise to progress better architecture and building design. We do this through research, organising events and supporting publications.

Also mentioned as further reading in the RIBA JOURNAL 'planning for the future' by the RIBA President, Angela Brady.

Judges comments for the UKGBC/PRP 2013 inaugural Rising Star award:

"Congratulations also to Sofie Pelsmakers, Architecture for Change and UCL Energy Institute who the judges thought deserved to be highly commended for The Environmental Design Pocketbook. In 2012 Sofie published the book, a practical guide which uses an innovative approach to communicate better green building approaches to architects. The judges were impressed by Sofie’s ability to take complicated principles and communicate them in a way that is relevant to the target audience, to both promote and enable change."

Sofie Pelsmakers has been listed as 1 of 100 top Twitter influencers in sustainable construction, design and the built environment (Ecobuild 2012) and in the top 10 of  BDtwitter100 2013 and BD's top ten sustainability tweeters (2013).

Sofie Pelsmakers is one of the invited judges of the inaugural 2012 ECOWAN Sustainability awards and writes about it here. 

Watch the brief clip in which Sofie talks about the difficulty of shortlisting as the projects were so diverse: from small community rooms and houses all over the world to skyscraper offices and plaza's. Hence as a team we decided to represent the different scales and functions of buildings throughout the shortlisting. 

Sofie also makes the point that performance data, i.e. how buildings actually perform, would be useful in the submission of projects to sustainability awards - as this is after all a building's true sustainability test.

Sofie Pelsmakers has been listed as 1 of 20 'women influencing sustainable architecture' in UK by Architects Journal and here.

Sofie's book 'The Environmental Design Pocketbook' has received commendation for the 2012 RIBA President's Award for outstanding practice-located research and as 1 of 100 top Twitter influencers in sustainable construction, design and the built environment.

Sofie has been selected as one of this year's judges for the UK Passivhaus Awards

The Environmental Design Pocketbook', Sofie Pelsmakers, RIBA Publications, published March 2012. All author royalties are used
to support future updates  and editions as well as to enable further research in the field.

View Sofie's talk here

April 4th 2012: Sofie spoke at UCL's Grand Challenges about the Future of Housing in London as part of London 2062. View Sofie's presentation here.

Month of April: Sofie as guest blogger at ECOWAN's Eco in the city.

©Owen Blacker

Stephen is currently in Australia on a new venture opening the Sydney branch of AfC. Sustainable development in Australia is a very different 'world' to the one we are familiar with in Europe - a carbon trading system kicks off in July 2012, very few buildings have had environmental assessments (such as Green Star, the Australian version of BREEAM or LEED) and attitudes to sustainable living are quite different for a largely car-dependent population in a country economically attached to coal and nuclear energy. We look forward to addressing all of these challenges as we learn from our new colleagues in Australia and hopefully by being able to share our European experiences.

Sofie wrote a comment piece in Blueprint April 2012 (p 83): "Considerations regarding the environmental performance of a building are often perceived by the design industry as an additional constraint or obstacle in a world beset by bureaucracy".  Sofie argues that environmental drivers should be used as a generator of design aesthetic rather than seen as another constraint or 'box to tick'.

Contribution to The Housing Design Handbook, David Levitt

RESET: The future of the World in 100 Objects - AfC contributed a 'brain'!

UEL Ice Challenge