Architype

For the first time in the 4.5 billion year history of the planet, our home, the climate impacts of our lives have exceeded the planet’s ability to self-heal. This has already resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, climate refugees, lost livelihoods, and violent atrocities. As powerfully put at COP28, the earth does not belong to us, we belong to the earth. We need to heed this truth and change how we exist, before we are all forced to by the planet. 

Architype believes in actions not words when it comes to the climate emergency. Below we have detailed our commitments to the planet and its people we are proud to be supporting. These commitments have been made as they align with our core values of creating ecologically progressive communities.

Tell the Truth – This is a progressive anti-greenwashing campaign calling for honesty and transparency from the built environment. Architype is a practice committed to making sure our buildings work, and we find the prevalence of unfounded claims and greenwashing within the industry very damaging and distressing. Through committing to this campaign, people will know they can trust our contributions to the industry and that we can be held to account. This campaign has been initiated by Bennetts Associates who have been championing Climate Action for years. Joined 2023

End Gas Now – Following the global declarations of climate and biodiversity emergencies in 2019, we committed to this campaign in recognition that fossil fuels must stay in the ground if we are to continue human life in a recognisable form. We know buildings when properly designed only require minimal electrical energy to heat them and have pledged to refuse assisting or promoting projects involving new or replacement systems requiring the combustion of fossil-fuel gas. Joined 2022

30 to 2030 – This is a campaign to champion local leadership on climate action in Herefordshire initiated by the city council. As signatories to this campaign, we will be contributing to a network of local companies and initiatives to highlight, support, and celebrate positive climate outcomes at a local level. Joined 2022

Part Z – This proposed Approved Document Z would introduce new requirements for the assessment of whole life carbon emissions into the Building Regulations. This would include the limiting of embodied carbon emissions for all major building projects representing significant carbon emissions that are currently unregulated. We support the voluntary action occurring across our industry, and their call for its introduction into UK regulations to rapidly accelerate the UK’s action to Net Zero.  Signed 2021

Race to Zero – Initiated by the UN, this campaign seeks to create a powerful critical mass representing thousands of companies committed to measurable climate action in line with the 1.5oC pathway established through the COP Paris Agreement. Architype are on a pathway to reaching net zero green house gas (GHG) emissions as soon as possible, and by 2050 at the latest with an interim target of achieving a minimum reduction of 50% of GHG emissions attributed to our operations by 2030. This includes scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions – to the best of our abilities. Our latest 2022-2023 impact report from the 3 studios can be read here. Joined 2021

AJ Retrofirst Campaign – This campaign, launched by the Architects Journal publication, aims to champion the retrofit and reuse of existing buildings, and remove the existing barriers that favour the demolition and new build through three key demands on Tax, Policy & Procurement.  It is essential that the Government and Industry reuse buildings first, and new buildings come second. We internally track the percentage of our work which is retrofit and this growing sector currently represents 27% of our work. Joined in 2020

Architects Declare – In 2019, we committed to this ‘first-of-it’s-kind’ campaign which sets out 12 powerful commitments addressing the spectral climate and biodiversity impacts from architects’ activities within the built environment. You can read about our current and planned actions against these campaign points here. Since launching, Architects Declare has also advocated for progressive policies including the Building Blocks campaign announced in 2023, and Architype projects have been prominent within its reports and knowledge-sharing events. Joined 2019

RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge – First launched in 2019 by the RIBA Sustainable Futures Group, this Climate Challenge ramped up the focus on wider performance targets within the industry, including embodied carbon and water consumption, alongside the more established operational energy metric. The challenge has driven us to develop how we approach monitoring and collating the wider impacts across our portfolio of designs. We recently leveraged elements of our database towards the UK’s Net Zero Carbon Standard. Our primary approach for delivering low operational energy targets is through adopting the Passivhaus and EnerPHit certifications standards, which represented between 72-87% of our projects in 2023.  Joined 2019

Alongside our climate commitments, Architype has been active members of the following organisations which share similar principals, as well as organisations such as ACAN, LETI, CIBSE, RIBA, various Universities, and local and national governments when setting new green policies:

• AECB, Association for Environmentally Conscious Building, since 1982
• UKGBC, UK Green Building Council
• PHT, Passivhaus Trust, as founding members since 2010, and as current chair of the Trust in Scotland
• ASBP, Alliance for Sustainable Building Products board members
• BPN, Building Performance Network

Internally, we have established Key Performance Indicators that we use to quantitatively track our performance. We set these annually informed by how they could best support climate action both on our projects and within our offices, and we review our performance against them monthly. 

Please get in touch if you would like to learn more about how you can support these initiatives too – it is only by collective action that real change can be delivered.