Building
Resilient
Neighbourhoods
Location
Islington
Year
2024
Service areas
This project is a collaboration between Love Design Studio, Shade the UK, and the Grantham institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.
The Brief
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 Solution
1) Reviewed and assessed the strengths and limitations of existing international, European, and UK metrics, methodologies, and technologies that assess overheating risk in buildings.
2) Conducted a pilot overheating assessment to understand the vulnerability of buildings to increasing temperatures and to develop a metric-style tool based on real-world scenarios. The assessment focused on buildings within Islington and included six building archetypes: (i) mid-rise residential (ii) high-rise residential (iii) school (iv) hospital (v) care home (vi) prison
Residential buildings assessed further demonstrate the lack of preparedness in the borough: council homes, flats and housing estates, particularly those south-facing or with a high proportion of glazing, place dwellers at high risk of overheating.
3) Collected stories from Islington residents capturing their experiences of living and working in overheated buildings. The stories shared by Islington residents demonstrate a wide range of people are currently impacted by overheating and that vulnerable groups are already disproportionately affected. From young children, hospital staff, people with long-term health conditions, the people of Islington are not prepared for the impacts of increasing temperatures.
4) Held a roundtable event to collect feedback on what a successful heat metric-style tool could look like. Participants included architects, local authorities, tenant's associations, and local businesses.
The Result
The UK does not currently have a user friendly heat metric to help building residents and occupants assess their current and future vulnerability to overheating. Existing metrics, methodologies, and technologies that assess overheating risk in buildings were found to be overly complex, costly to undertake and failed to communicate heat risk effectively to the average person. This presents a significant barrier for home-owners, tenants and other relevant stakeholders to understand the risk of overheating within occupied buildings
Islington’s building stock is not ready to withstand the increasing risk of excessive heat. This presents serious implications for buildings providing key public services in the borough, such as care homes, educational institutions and hospitals, given the high risk for occupants particularly during peak heatwave events.
The findings identify that further work is required to develop detailed options for the design of the metric, with additional research required into the economic feasibility and public uptake of an overheating tool.
