The Essential Shift to Net Zero Carbon, a presentation by Alexander Esfahani

Alexander Esfahani, a senior architect based in Manchester and studio champion for our Responsible Design Group, promotes the initiative of net zero carbon across Chapman Taylor's global studios.

Alexander presented earlier this summer at the 89th World of Façades conference, at the Mercure Piccadilly, Manchester about the essential shift to net zero carbon.

The influence of architectural design can significantly respond to the momentum and importance of net zero carbon buildings. The presentation was a brief explanation of the important design principles we need to embrace to meet our carbon objectives, fundamentally focusing on our role as custodians for our clients.

In his introduction, he explores the Persian City Yazd, Iran, which predates 5,000 years and has withstood multiple building lifecycles.

“There is an element of Romanticism to a city that has withstood the test of time for 5,000 years and was a sophisticated response to materials in its context.

Our overreliance on industrial-age materials and searching for isms in architecture has led us to seek a necessity of building architecture that is labelled Net Zero Carbon. Yazd didn’t seek to be Net Zero it sought to be a place to live and work. Its aspirations were a given. If we achieve our goals right with our targets of Net Zero then we will start to find that our buildings are no longer labelled with these targets but instead focused on what they are meant for. Places to work and live.”

Zak World of Façades is an international conference series on façade design & engineering. It has attracted over 27,000 delegates across its 88 completed events to date. The one-day conference in the UK showcased sustainable innovations and challenges in the construction industry pertaining to the building envelope and also displayed the latest technological solutions from leading solution providers.