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On a high-value site in the most historic core of London, the new Minories development centres around an exemplary model of adaptive reuse. It’s been overseen by architect ACME in partnership with developer 4C Hotel Group. In this article our design director Gerry O’Brien explores how looking into the past can create real long-term value for such a site’s future.

Since our founding 25 years ago, AKT II has forged an international practice that unifies the cultures and disciplines of architecture and structural engineering. This book is an engine for critical reflection on the scope, potential, and limits of what AKT II has come to define as Design Engineering.

100 Liverpool Street – which is nominated for the 2022 RIBA Stirling Prize – is a cornerstone development for British Land’s masterplanned Broadgate regeneration, within the historic City of London. It was designed by Hopkins Architects. Two 1980s-era office structures have been assimilated, reconfigured and extended within the delivery of the modern mixed-use programme; the scheme adds +40% in functional area while reusing 50% of the superstructure and 100% of the foundations. Altogether, this pioneering design solution saves an estimated 7,000 tonnes of CO2, in comparison with the notional new construction.

As part of the 2022 London Design Festival, this bespoke architectural installation uses an ancient-Egyptian wall-building technique to showcase the cutting-edge carbon-neutral concrete that’s been developed by the London-based enterprise Seratech. Their team – a spin-out from Imperial College London – has developed a way of sequestering CO2 within the creation of novel, waste-free construction materials. The installation is engineered by AKT II, and has been delivered for the 2022 festival with the support of the specialist concrete contractor Byrne Bros.

Khudi Bari – meaning ‘Tiny House’ – is a modular monsoon shelter that’s designed by the Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum. It’s made for inhabitants of the country’s Ganges river delta (where entire swathes of land can flood overnight), and can be hand-assembled using local materials, with a cost of just £300. AKT II’s team was engaged to reconfigure the shelter’s structural supports so that it could be demonstrated, using the thinner bamboo that’s available in the UK, as part of the 2022 Summer Exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts.

Ten years on, AKT II director Edoardo Tibuzzi looks back at the BMW Group Pavilion at the 2012 London Olympics. Has the promise of creating an environmentally friendly structure that can have a meaningful purpose after the Games been kept?

When we talk about pollution, there’s a form of it that’s almost everywhere but gets relatively little coverage: light. Artificial lighting has become integral to our modern civilisation, however its excessive use is now harming health, disrupting ecosystems, and even interfering with humanity’s understanding of the universe. In this article, AKT II’s bioclimatic associate Mattia Donato highlights the scale of the problem, and talks through what we can do as designers to create a – metaphorically – brighter future.

In central London, the new Marshall Building is a multifunctional academic facility that’s been designed by Grafton Architects for the existing urban campus of the London School of Economics (LSE). Inside, the project’s programmatic challenges are turned into a clear design opportunity, with a series of tree-like transfer structures that now form part of the building’s – and the university’s – architectural narrative. In this video, AKT II’s design directors Marta Galinanes Garcia and Chris O’Meara share some of the engineering insights behind this new ‘tree of knowledge’.

For World Environment Day, we look at the successful story behind the waterless garden in the city of Sharjah and take the opportunity to hear from Elisa Gatto – environmental biologist, expert in urban vegetation, climate change adaption strategies and land productivity – and Mattia Donato, AKT II associate on ways to synergistically produce clean energy and food.