Introduction
The workshop brief was to identify and explore a city block including a mix of building uses and propose a plan to sustainably redevelop the city block using master planning techniques and assessment through established environmental methods such as BREEAM or LEED.
Description of project
The workshop was made up of an interdisciplinary group of both Year 3 Architecture students together with Year 3 Sustainable Energy Engineering students.
The students identified a city block which comprised a variety of uses such as hotel, retail, museum, and housing and documented them in terms of their condition and likely energy demand using CIBSE benchmarks, whilst producing a 3D representation of the block.
They were tasked with producing a group report on the redevelopment of the block under the various categories of climate change, resource use, transport, placemaking, ecology, community, business and buildings and to subsequently present their work to the wider group.
The students then applied an established community environmental assessment method such as BREEAM Communities or LEED for Neighbourhoods, (or other method depending on the appropriate international standards) to assess how the redevelopment of their block could be improved to achieve a high environmental rating.
They were subsequently asked to review a city of a similar size or population to Waterford which claims to have high environmental credentials and propose some ideas that could be replicated from this city into their block.
Each individual student was asked based on their experience in the project to produce a summary of how they would assess any next project with environmental performance as the driver.
