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The human species must urgently reduce carbon emissions. With 49% of the UK’s carbon attributable to buildings, our increasingly decarbonised grid and improved fabric have made headway. But we face a further challenge: reducing embodied carbon within the building’s structure. In this article, director Nicola Carniato discusses what our industry can do to tackle climate change.

Data is one of the world’s most powerful, sought-after commodities, but how does it affect the way we design? Edoardo Tibuzzi, director of AKT II’s computational research team p.art, outlines how the technology boom has changed and enhanced how we design the built environment.

“Ipsa scientia potestas est” – knowledge itself is power. We can observe this easily when we look at the role of the library throughout history. In this article design director Valentina Galmozzi and senior engineer Danae Polyviou detail how libraries have evolved and adapted through the centuries, from the ancient world to our modern era.

Expectations of bland, monotonous, uninspired design, and of a product-driven by efficiency at the expense of quality and sensual experience, have plagued this form of construction. Although much discussed in recent times, offsite is not new. We have tried it many times in the past, and it has failed many times. It has been affected by social, political and economic cycles. It clearly has an image problem which needs to be overcome. It has not succeeded historically. So, the question is: how are we going to change this perception? How do we now make offsite succeed? Gerry O’Brien, Design Director, investigates.

The cantilever is unique in its ability to inspire awe and wonder in our structures by defying gravity. Yet so often it also appears excessive and obtuse, appropriated as a materially inefficient statement of power and wealth. It is a thoroughly modern structural element – the essential engineering problem solved by science born out of the Enlightenment period, and technologies forged during the Industrial Revolution. Design Director Martin Ocampo details what makes the cantilever unique as a structural element and why this makes it so difficult to get right.

Two near-identical structures sit side by side on the new St Paul’s School campus. The difference between them? The latest building saved over £1 million of our client’s money. Marta Galiñanes-Garcia, Design Director at AKT II and project lead, details how the team achieved this saving and the story behind the structural design of St Paul’s School – a project with a multitude of complexities and elegant, cost-effective solutions.

As we move further into the world where the embodied carbon of a building is outweighing operational carbon in its predicted lifetime, the impact of a building’s structure becomes more and more prevalent in the discussion and decision-making process of the early stage design. Design Director Steve Toon outlines how CLT/concrete hybrid structures can sometimes be more efficient than using alternate materials.

Working alongside Zaha Hadid Architects and Hilson Moran, we are collaborating to develop a digital architecture platform to create sustainable, environmentally-conscious residences for Roatán Próspera – a development on Roatán Island in Honduras.

It’s common knowledge that engineers like columns. As the ‘marmite’ of the built environment industry, both clients and architects sometimes feel that columns can be limiting to their developments and designs, respectively. Often, engineers find themselves trying to hide them even or remove them. But AKT II wants to celebrate the integral structural element. Design Director Martin Ocampo makes the case for columns as an element that should be celebrated.

After a century of domination by the heavyweights of the building industry, we are now living in an age of environmental awareness, and thus the use of timber in design and construction is gaining more momentum than ever before. Design Director Rob Partridge, Director Ricardo Candel and Associate Ed Durie detail the strides made in timber design and what more can still be done.

We’re pleased to announce that our project with KPF for our client Tejat V Lux Sàrl, advised by Orion Capital Managers and Pella Real Estate Partners, has received planning permission. AKT II is providing structural, façade and bioclimatic engineering services to the 81 Newgate Street project.

Following on from the world and industry-wide reaction to the climate emergency, and the Architect’s Journal’s #retrofirst campaign, is retrofit truly the way forward for the built environment and to work towards achieving net-zero carbon? After AKT II’s many successful retrofit projects in London, the director of our Manchester Office, Raj Takhar, thinks so. In this article, Raj details how we can apply these successes to existing buildings in Manchester, Leeds and the entire North West of England.

Structural engineers have been refurbishing and repurposing buildings for generations. As a matter of course in our profession, we have to look towards the benefits of reusing existing structures as much as possible, becoming experts at breathing new life into buildings whilst working within their inherent limitations. In this article, we detail how we can continue to improve on reusing existing buildings.

After working with IJP Architects on the Henderson Waves Footbridge, completed in 2009, we have once again partnered to deliver a new footbridge in Dubai, UAE, for our client Emaar.