Competing carbon claims fuel Wyndford demolition debate
January 27 2023
Contentious plans to demolish four multi-storey tower blocks on Glasgow's Wyndford estate have received the backing of architect and RIAS fellow Dr Richard Atkins.
The former chair of the Scottish Ecological Design Association has broken ranks with colleagues opposed to a tear down to argue that there is 'little or no basis' to arguments that the blocks should be retained on energy efficiency or carbon emissions grounds - as the blocks in question hold 'no embodied emissions value'.
Explaining his stance in a detailed emissions report Atkins dismisses claims that a full demolition and rebuild would result in 10,000 tonnes of embodied carbon emissions, arguing that new homes will carry emit 48% less CO2 than retrofitted. Instead, Atkins estimates that each new home would be responsible for just 12 tonnes of embodied carbon emissions, not the 74 tonnes claimed by opponents.
Other mitigating factors also favour new builds with 3,000 tonnes of timber expected to store 1,530 tonnes of carbon and Atkins points out that all concrete would be reused as aggregate.
Atkins commented: “There is no evidence to support claims the four blocks should be retained and retrofitted based solely on CO2(e) emissions or energy efficiency. “The volume of materials needed for the new structures, when multiplied by the Inventory of Carbon & Energy values, supports replacement."
Atkins also argues that the existing accommodation cannot current spatial and accessibility standards, nor be retrofitted to comply with net zero direct emissions heating standards.
7 Comments
Introduce him to the concept of the big picture?
Use the £60mill cost of this exercise to rebuild the ghost streets of north and east Glasgow and sequestrate all that lovely carbon re-populating these streets with efficient new timber kit homes.
Then bring in people with drive / ambition / ideas to revitalise the four existing blocks use well tried techniques like fixing problems / maintaining the common areas and improving the public realm.
As noted previously 600 flats generating a £500 monthly rent -- £3.6mill notional / £3.0 mill or thereabouts realistically annually -- will provide the funds to do a lot of upgrades across the estate.
There is a business case in there somewhere if someone in HA land could be bothered to look -- current thinking is very builder friendly and questions need to be asked about this one club strategy.
Surely £3mill could be found to pump prime the exercise and refurb the blocks one at a time.
The bigger question would be the health of a city that can have its social housing estate reduced by at least 300 units and have its HA sector claim that this was progress?
Hidden agenda -- cut the numbers in the schemes so that there is a ready supply of customers for the BTR developments around the city centre?
It would appear -- as always -- that there is an internal debate ongoing regarding housing provision n Glesga and the current dynamic is BTR in the centre plus developer boxes on the outskirts with crowd control / tidying up in the HA / social sector.
Very unsophisticated and very limited -- great for the professionals / poor for the plebs.
But, we should probably ignore the experts eh? What do they know! Far better to base these strategic decisions on your fag packet economics and lazy cliches of professionals versus plebs.
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Spend £60mill to reduce the Glesga social housing estate by 300 units at a time of housing waiting lists and growing homelessness -- some mistake surely?
And the loss might be more than 300 units if GCC does not play ball and hand over a local social centre for redevelopment.
All this effort to develop an existing active housing area when there are ghost streets all throughout north and east Glasgow that need repopulated.
Lazy thinking from a lazy management.