Designers have crucial role to ensure property nails net zero

Architectural and urban design is playing a key role in the transition of the built environment to net zero.

“Design matters,” said Signe Kongebro, global design director of urbanism, Henning Larsen Architects. “How you bridge investments and the whole real estate business case into solutions is crucial in order to achieve decarbonisation in cities.”

Speaking to Real Asset Insight’s Richard Betts, Kongebro said it is important for designers to expand the way they look at design. “In the old days it was much more about having a brief and then doing some sketches and so on. Now we need to work with deeper insights.”

She added that this could be with regard to carbon or biodiversity or the many various topics that relate to climate change. “I think that is the most exciting thing right now, being an architect in a very global world.”

Both occupiers and investors are engaging with the subject but but to a varied extent. “Some are not interested at all, they are pushing the agenda towards the end customers,” she said. “Others are at the forefront in real estate where they actually trying to combine both capital and other types of partnerships to actually achieve some of these goals.”