Sustainability series - Intro blog 1 Sustainability through design

— 19 Feb 2025

Sustainability is at the heart of our practice, and we have blogged previously about the sustainable measures incorporated in various projects as well as government initiatives such as Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) and zero carbon climate targets.

Jonathan Rhind Architects have produced a guide exploring the issues surrounding sustainability and how they can affect your building project. Over the next few months, we will publish this guide as a series of blogs, to help guide you through this extensive and evolving subject.

Jonathan Rhind Architects have been conserving, repairing and upgrading historic buildings since 1986. The work that we do is inherently sustainable - enabling the reuse of historic fabric, using the existing natural materials and embodied carbon contained within them.

Working locally in the southwest in conjunction with local craftsmen, contractors and consultants; reusing local materials; and minimising waste, all contributes to creating a sustainable circular economy.

As a practice, we are looking further at how we use, alter and build sustainable buildings. Our aim is to inform our clients so that they can decide how best to proceed with their project, whether refurbishment, conversion or new build; that will be better for the planet, our environment and ourselves.

We have a toolkit in place to ensure we are endeavouring to do everything we can as a practice to engage with and resolve sustainability issues.

There are measures we have adopted as standard practice - such as:

• Actively assessing new technologies and pursuing the most appropriate specs to ensure our projects can be managed appropriately
• Actively engaging with team training to ensure we are as up to date as a practice as we can be
• Creating accessible resources so clients feel fully informed and understand the issues and implications surrounding sustainability
• Creating and maintaining a debate on this pressing issue