A plague of frogs was about the only nightmare scenario that Professor Susan Roaf didn’t toss into her forecast for the future of the planet if we continue to build the way we’ve done to date.
Addressing the inaugural Ecobuild conference in London, Professor Roaf warned that if we don’t build sustainably, climate change will accelerate, the weather will deteriorate and cities will be plunged into darkness as their huge appetite for power causes electricity systems to blow a fuse.
Not everyone believes it will be as bad as that but, as pollution worsens and the evidence for global warming mounts, there is clearly growing interest in sustainable construction. This was borne out both by Ecobuild and TRADA‘s In Touch with Timber conference which was also held in May. Between them they attracted 1,500 people, a veritable buttress of architects (or whatever the collective noun is), plus a range of engineers, developers, builders, and representatives of local authorities and the social housing sector.
Naturally, at the TRADA event timber construction systems and wood products generally took centre stage as a route to sustainable building. But they figured highly at Ecobuild too. The message from both was that this new direction in construction, besides being good for the planet, is also a business opening for the right materials and products. Or as a speaker at Ecobuild said: “There is massive opportunity in sustainability”.
OFFSITE 2005 this week also highlighted the potential for timber in the building industry’s drive to use “modern methods of construction” both for environmental reasons and to offset site skill shortages.
What all these events also flagged up, however, was that to capitalise on latest building trends, the timber sector has to market itself strongly and, just as importantly, give construction professionals all the technical data they need on products and services. This last fact also underlies the TRADA sponsored Best Technical Information Support category in the TTJ Awards which is now open for entries.
