Spotlight: Shreya Kapur
At the start of each quarter, we like to highlight the incredible work being undertaken by our team, showing off their talent and experience whilst also getting to know them a bit.
Marking the fourth instalment in our Employee Spotlight series, we would like to introduce Shreya Kapur, Sustainability Consultant at Love Design Studio.
Shreya holds a unique position at our company since, alongside her duties and project work for Love Design Studio, she also oversees operations for our community interest company, Shade the UK.
We thought sitting down with Shreya to talk about her joint roles would give us an excellent opportunity to showcase the incredible work we complete across both parts of the organisation and give a flavour for how they overlap, with Shreya as the key linchpin. So, without further ado, let’s welcome Shreya!
Hi Shreya let’s get started!
1. Let’s start with a fun one. What interests you most when you’re not in work? This could be anything, ranging from the kinds of books you read or what you find yourself doing over the weekend.
I recently completed the Seven Sisters hike with my friends from Seaford to Eastbourne! It was one of the first hikes I’ve done in the UK, which showed me that I really don't need to travel far to see some beautiful sites.
2. What would you say you are looking forward to most this year? Both from a personal and a professional standpoint? Like a music festival, a trip abroad, or some piece of government legislation!
Professionally, I've recently received my certification as a WELL Accredited Professional (WELL AP). WELL is a certification buildings can obtain, which focuses on the health and wellbeing of building users. It covers a number of areas relevant to us at Love Design Studio, such as air quality and materials, but also goes into fun things like how to provide good nutrition, exercise, and workplace benefits to employees.
So I'm looking forward to supporting projects with their WELL certifications this year!
Personally, I've got tickets to see the Devil Wears Prada theatre show in December which I'm buzzing about. It's one of my comfort films and I'm really excited to see Vanessa Williams play Miranda Priestly, she's one of my favourite actors from the 00's.
3. So, at Love Design Studio, you work as a sustainability consultant, but I know that you seem to work between different specialties across the organisation. What would you say your main focus and responsibilities are at Love Design Studio?
The benefit of joining the company in its infancy means I've been able to get involved with lots of different areas within the company.
I’m currently overseeing the Wellbeing working group, which ensures the design of new buildings does not sacrifice the wellbeing of its future occupants. A large part of this is our daylight and sunlight services, which include the internal assessment of new buildings to ensure there will be adequate daylight and sunlight provision. We also assess surrounding properties to ensure that any new developments we work on have minimal impact on daylight and sunlight provision to neighbouring buildings.
An important part of our wellbeing services also includes thermal comfort, which links strongly with our work at Shade the UK. Our team undertakes dynamic thermal modelling to understand the overheating risk within a building and provide suitable mitigation strategies to design teams to improve thermal comfort for the people inside.
I'm also taking a leading role on our planning services, i.e. improving the sustainability credentials of developments to help receive planning approval. In particular, we are working on large, multi-scope projects that integrate all aspects of our expertise across the working groups and help streamline the design process for our clients.
4. Could you tell us a bit more about how you got involved in Love Design Studio and what interests you about sustainability within the design sector more generally?
I joined Love Design Studio shortly after graduating from my studies in Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick. In my final year, my favourite module was 'Sustainable Cities', where I developed my interest in urban sustainability. It really showed me the importance of design and that we already have the technology and know-how to make a difference yet we're still a far way off from mitigating and adapting to our changing climate.
5. Alongside your work at Love Design Studio, you also oversee operations at our sister company, Shade the UK. Would you be able to tell us more about the mission of Shade the UK and how it relates to our work at Love Design Studio?
Sure, Shade the UK is a community interest company (CIC) aiming to adapt both the built environment and public spaces from rising temperatures, namely heatwaves and periods of extreme heat. Our particular focus is the overlap between overheating and vulnerable people, as certain demographics are disproportionately impacted by the growing threat of a changing climate.
Overall, our mission is to reach zero overheating-related deaths in the UK and to protect the health and wellbeing of vulnerable communities during a heatwave.
6. What projects are you currently working on at Shade the UK? How would you say you are able to juggle your responsibilities between the two companies?
The work we do at Love Design Studio and Shade the UK are so intertwined. On the one hand, Love Design Studio is able to provide the necessary technical basis for much of our project work, whereas Shade the UK is an entity to get the message out that rising temperatures pose a major threat for which the UK’s existing building stock is not ready. I suppose we drive home the same principles through each, whether that’s through project work with Love Design Studio or boosting awareness through Shade the UK.
One representative example of a project is the work we completed with the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE). This project aimed to address the gap in user-friendly overheating metrics amongst different stakeholders, with a particular focus on Islington, which has been identified as one of the most vulnerable boroughs in London to the impacts of climate change.
The team at Love Design Studio carried out the technical work for the project, including a pilot overheating assessment of six building archetypes in Islington to understand the vulnerability of buildings to increasing temperatures and to develop a metric-style tool based on real-world scenarios. But the project is being pushed through STUK to show different stakeholders that this particular area needs more research - people deserve to know how their building will perform in the summer and whether they're going to suffer!
7. With regards to the work you’ve completed recently, are there any examples of your work or case studies that you’re just really proud of and would be able to share with us?
Regarding my work at Love Design Studio, since the beginning of 2024 I have managed a multi-scope project for a new lifestyle hotel in Wimbledon, West London. We were brought onboard to provide several services, including energy assessments, overheating, air quality, ecology, biodiversity, whole life-cycle carbon, and circular economy. Working across so many scopes and sub-projects requires significant coordination within the team at LDS and, in a lot of cases, you have to balance the trade-offs between one area and another to ensure the design is feasible. The scheme has recently been recommended for approval by Merton Council and we look forward to working with the project team during the next phases of the design process.
Regarding Shade the UK, we recently published the 'Overheating Adaptation Guide for Homes', on which we collaborated with the British Red Cross. It's a toolkit for both homeowners and renters that provides ways of cooling down their home, ranging from high-cost retrofit measures, such as painting their home and installing shutters, to more easily accessible measures such as planting and putting up your bedsheets to block the sun!
8. Great to hear! What would you say the main, tangible benefits or outputs of this case study were?
The aim of the Overheating Adaptation Guide for Homes was to provide a range of measures that are applicable to everyone, no matter what kind of building you live in. Whether it’s a flat or a house, owned or rented, there will be something in the guide that's helpful to people to be able to keep cool in the summer - no matter where they are in the country!
Although we are entering the colder months now, this is the perfect time for people to start thinking about changes they can make in their home to prepare themselves for next summer.
9. With regards to your work at both Love Design Studio and Shade the UK, making our built infrastructure more sustainable and resilient to extremes of heat, what do you think needs to change in the policy and regulatory landscapes to drive your work forward?
There has been a lot of change in the industry regarding new developments and overheating. For instance, we have the Part O Building Regulations that have recently come into effect, and now more and more local authorities require overheating assessments to be undertaken to gain planning permission.
However, there's little to no overheating policy in place for existing buildings, where most people currently live, especially the most vulnerable.
10. So, for instance, if you were made Prime Minister tomorrow, what would the key policy changes you would make be? (Let’s have a serious one and a fun one).
A more serious one is to implement a maximum temperature threshold for key locations where vulnerable people reside. For example, places like schools, hospitals, and care homes should all have a temperature limit where, if it is exceeded, immediate contingency plans and retrofit measures should be implemented. This will protect people both in the short and long term.
A more fun one is that I would provide free cooling products like water, parasols, hats, and fans to the public whenever there's a heatwave!
Thanks for your contributions! Any plans for the weekend?
Off to visit my grandparents up in Belfast but absolutely not looking forward to the weather.