mae

mæ is working with East Thames Group, Arup, Wates and the Environmental Building Partnership on the 'Retrofit for the Future' initiative. Our team is one of 180 to win contracts to devise innovative plans for ‘low carbon refurbishments’ of existing low-rise social housing. The £3.5 million competition, run by the Technology Strategy Board, will enable the successful companies to devise solutions geared towards making deep cuts in the carbon emissions produced by housing. The most promising designs will be built in Phase 2, culminating in the retrofit and monitoring of up to 100 ‘demonstrator’ houses from early 2010.

On 9th October mae Partner Alex Ely joined Sir Bob Kerslake, John Slaughter and David Birkbeck amongst others on a panel debate 'Achieving Design Quality during the Credit Crunch', chaired by Mike Gahagan which formed part of the Transform South Yorkshire Design Awards 2009. Further details can be found on the Delivering Design Quality Initiative website. More recently he spoke at the Sheffield Civic Trust 'City Living...where next' event on the 27th October, as part of Sheffield Urban Design Week.

mæ is part of a consortium competitively selected to prepare a pattern book of house types for South Yorkshire. Commissioned by Transform South Yorkshire's Delivering Design Quality Initiative, the pattern book will look to raise the standard of new housing in the region, and will be available for use by local authorities and developer partners. Take a look at our previous design research work on sustainable house types here.

Alex Ely was invited to be on the jury for Europan 10 in Ireland, and recently participated in two days of judging for the sites in Dublin and Galway. He joined an illustrious panel which included Yvonne Farrell (Grafton Architects), Gerard Maccreanor (Maccreanor Lavington), Edward Jones (Dixon Jones Ltd), Aidan O'Connor (Department of the Environment) and poet Theo Dorgan.