Green Month 2023 Wraps Up
The month of November was a busy one for the MLA sustainability team, who organised and ran a series of events as part of our Green Month.
With any event or series of events it is always tricky to know if it’s going to ‘stick’ or not, but seeing that we are now at the end of the third edition it is safe to say that our annual Green Month has become an important MLA tradition. Green Month is a 4-week period dedicated to delving deeper into one climate literacy topic. The main goal is to equip ourselves with the knowledge and confidence to pursue design solutions that meaningfully address the climate and biodiversity emergency. As part of this year’s theme of ‘Net Zero and Beyond…’ we have tried to clarify what Net Zero Carbon currently* means in the construction industry and we have extended our explorations into the realm of the regenerative development and design.
A vital part of our Green Month is the engagement and dialogue with our fellow practitioners in the design and construction industry. We were, again, very lucky to have a number of great speakers into our offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow. We welcomed Sarah Peterson, director at XBuro to discuss Net Zero Operational Energy. MLA then hosted Chris Antoniou from John Gilbert Architects, getting his insight on how Passivhaus can help the industry work towards its Net Zero targets. Finally, we were delighted to have James Nelmes who shared Bennetts Associates’ experience in assessing and designing with embodied carbon reductions in mind.
We also had the opportunity to visit our friends at Material Source in their newly opened Glasgow Studio, where not only we filled out pockets with samples of new and innovative materials but also marveled at their curated collection of biomaterials. We then finished up the month at OVO Energy’s new office fit-out in Glasgow where we ran an internal workshop in which we explored practical ways of bringing both Net Zero requirements and wider considerations of regenerative design into our day-to-day practice.
Over the coming weeks, we will be putting together our thoughts and outcomes from this year’s Green Month and we look forward to sharing these with our community later this year. If you would like to discuss this further with our sustainability team, please do not hesitate in contacting us.
* Ahead of the publication of the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard, we have referred back to existing guidance provided by RIBA, LETI, UKGBC, WLCN.