The Forge is designed as open-plan office space, with exposed services and soffit.

It takes lessons from the manufacturing industry and applies them to construction.It is based on the understanding that comparable built assets share many common characteristics in the dimensions and requirements of their core elements – floor-to-ceiling heights, for example, or how to connect vertical and horizontal structural elements..

Similar to how flat-pack furniture uses standard parts and assembly techniques as integral elements in a wide range of products, P-DfMA designs buildings using a standardised ‘kit of parts’ that can be efficiently combined, while still producing highly customised structures.. By liberating architects from the mechanics of construction, it allows them to invest more of their time to where they can really add value – in creativity.. Optimisation as with other systems that use standardised elements, P-DfMA focused on the optimisation of each one, knowing that the multiple applications of each element will repay massively.. Optimising a standard beam so that it requires the minimum amount of steel, or reducing the depth of the floor slab to minimise the amount of concrete required, delivers substantial reductions in both carbon and cost when applied across entire sites, and even more so over multiple sites..In the true spirit of.Design to Value.

, optimisation of elements (not just beams and floor slabs) includes as many value drivers as possible, from environmental sustainability to the health and safety of the workforce (and indeed to the shortage of numbers in that workforce) to cost.. As a result of optimisation, automation and standardisation, the P-DfMA approach increases productivity, while reducing carbon (both embodied and in operation), construction time and cost.. Against Landsec’s typical benchmarks, the Forge is forecast to achieve significant gains in all of those areas..Achieving Net-Zero.

The Forge is designed to be the first commercial building in the UK to comply with the UK Green Building Council’s definition of a net-zero carbon building in both construction and operation..

This is delivered through the rigorous application of a raft of new and existing principles throughout design, manufacture, construction and operation, applying the value driver of reducing embodied carbon at every opportunity.It is therefore important to look at how to bridge these gaps across disciplines..

The ‘triple bottom line’ of sustainability.In the early 1980s, the theorist Freer Spreckley first identified the concept that sustainable development could be realised through identifying and balancing environmental and social outcomes against economic benefits.

This ‘triple bottom line’ of sustainability, as it is now known, underpins the corporate policy of organisations around the world.. To enable clarity on the desired outcomes of design, design value can be separated into a series of value types.The ‘triple bottom line’, as identified by Carmona et al., is a sum of environmental, economic, and social values, and is one of the most used methods of grouping value types in governmental strategies, such as HM Treasury’s Green Book (UKGov, 2018) guidance; the means by which the UK government assesses cost benefits in appraisal and evaluation processes..