Session 6 / London Live Program: A Perfect Storm

Vince Ugarow
Design Director
Hilson Moran, London

Can the impact of the COVID pandemic accelerate us to a net-zero carbon future?

In lockdown, London’s urban environment was eerily silent, and the air looked and felt cleaner. The quietude was particularly noticeable in the City of London’s tall building Eastern Cluster district.

Has this unusual circumstance given us a glimpse of what a net-zero carbon future could actually feel like? The anticipated transport revolution and switch to mass cycling will have a profound impact on dense urban environments. Soundscapes in the city’s high-rise districts will be drastically altered as a consequence, and this will also have a direct correlation to cleaner air.

Rapid decarbonization of the electricity supply has triggered the biggest tall office building engineering design change of the last 50 years, since the oil crisis in the 1970s.

Technological change driven by the digital “Fourth Industrial Revolution” has seen small power loads in offices plummet. This will have a drastic impact on air conditioning reliance in tall buildings.

We are witnessing a perfect storm, which can lead to a net-zero carbon future sooner than anticipated. Tall buildings can lead the way.

Natural ventilation strategies applied in tall buildings have the biggest potential operational carbon impact. This can offer a triple win: providing health and wellness benefits to the occupants, significantly reducing the building’s energy consumption, and providing a major contribution to achieving net-zero operational carbon emissions sooner than 2030.

One positive outcome of the world health pandemic is the improved environmental change in the urban habitat witnessed during lockdown. We should take advantage of this “pause” in “business as usual” and encourage tall building designers to radically change and lead the way to a net-zero carbon future.