AJ Climate Champions podcast: Balancing heritage and climate urgency in listed buildings

With this episode, Climate Champions launches a mini-series on how to make heritage buildings more climate-ready.

We’re talking to Oliver Smith of 5^th Studio about the practice’s radical retrofit of New Court at Trinity College, Cambridge. Completed in 2016, New Court remains a trailblazing project, because it pioneered an ambitious sustainability agenda in a Grade I-listed building using a nuanced approach that balanced heritage concerns with upgrading thermal and energy performance and internal comfort. The conservation methodology developed at New Court was subsequently adopted by Cambridge City Council.

Oliver explains how to intervene in heritage buildings in a way that respects their character and also meets 21^st-century expectations for comfort, amenity and sustainability. He challenges accepted wisdom on cold bridges at cornices and party walls, promoting the concept of ‘cool’ bridges. He advocates making a building ‘as good as it can be’ without aiming for a particular environmental certification, which can result in more insulation (and hence more cost) than necessary.

In this episode, Oliver explains how much to model and how much to monitor on a given project and why this is best done over the winter. He sees the monitoring at New Court as proof of concept that subsequent buildings can emulate.

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About Oliver Smith

Oliver Smith is a founding director of 5^th Studio, a 25-strong practice with offices in Cambridge, London and Oxford. 5^th Studio works at a range of scales from masterplanning (stitching together pedestrian networks through the Lea Valley even prior to London’s Olympic bid) to BLOQS, a 32,000 sq ft ‘maker’ space in Meridian Water, Enfield, shortlisted for this year’s AJ Architecture Awards. The practice has also pioneered an ambitious approach to upgrading the historic fabric of listed buildings.

Prior to co-founding 5^th Studio in 1997, Oliver spent eight years working for Richard MacCormac and six years at Stirling Wilford. He taught for over a decade at the Cambridge School of Architecture. He is a member of the Cambridgeshire Quality Panel, the Edge think-tank and an affiliate member of the Construction Industry Council.

Projects and resources mentioned in this episode

Source:Timothy Soar

New Court, Trinity College, Cambridge, (William Wilkins, 1825; Refurbishment, 5th Studio, 2016)
Courtyard elevation with new vapour permeable lime render colour matched to fragments of the original ochre render

Joseph Little, Breaking the Mould

Thamesmead Towers

WUFI modelling

Paul Baker, Indoor Climate and Health Research Centre, Glasgow Caledonian University

Architmetrics

Fermacell

Ventrolla

Bill Bordass, Usable Buildings Trust

JLL report, From value creation to value preservation – real estate investors rethink the ‘value of green’ (January, 2022)

Salix Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme

Edge Debate: Heritage & Net Zero: A wicked problem?

Chris Jofeh, Chair, Decarbonisation of Existing Homes at Welsh Government

Source:Timothy Soar

New Court, Trinity College, Cambridge 2016. Refurbished student room with internal wall insulation stopped short of the cornice and new joinery providing a concealed chase for services

In association with

Climate Champions is produced in association with ACAN, the Architects’ Climate Action Network
Podcast produced and edited by Simon Aldous
Music: Edmilson do Pífano, Forró de dois Amigos. Interpretation: Felipe Tanaka e banda Balaio de Baião