Sustainability

Sustainable design creates places that use resources efficiently and are flexible enough to change over time. When planning your project, you should consider its social, environmental and economic impact.

UNESCO's three elements of sustainability.

When thinking about sustainability, you need to think about much more than its energy efficiency. Good design for a building means being adaptable, using resources efficiently and delivering value over its lifetime. When it is poorly designed, on the other hand, it can increase carbon emissions unnecessarily, be uneconomic to run, and need future investment to adapt to change in its purpose.

As the client, you must consider environmental factors in making decisions about your project, from site selection and procurement to detailed interior design and ongoing use.

You should set sustainability objectives and track them as your project develops.

Ways to start thinking about sustainability

1. Think about money differently
2. Focus on more than energy use
3. Adopt common sense strategies
4. Know how you actually use buildings
5. Benchmark energy performance
6. Assume things will change
7. Change behaviour
8. Know the carbon emission standards
9. Think about where you site your building
10. Understand what can make a building sustainable

Sustainable Places

CABEs resource on planning, designing and managing sustainable places provides advice on how to tackle climate change, as well as many best practice examples.

Examples of sustainability

The first steps to a low carbon future.

An energy reduction action plan.