Displaying episodes 1 - 30 of 164 in total
Developers can build sustainably and at scale, if they want to. With Nicola Cronin and Stephen O'Shea (Cairn Homes Plc)
A wise woman once said: "sustainability is the doing, ESG is the talking about it".Today an Irish house-building giant has made a major move on Passive House — publish...
How can we embed sustainable design into the construction process? With Mhairi Grant (Paper Igloo)
Jeff invited Mhairi Grant, co founder of award-winning architectural practice Paper Igloo, to join us to talk about the challenges of ensuring that one's ideas for sus...
Why is making UK homes more efficient so difficult? Leyla Boulton (Green Conservation; Financial Times)
Why is making UK homes more efficient so difficult? So asked journalist Leyla Boulton earlier this year in the pages of the Financial Times. Seeing a retrofit article ...
What can we do about waste in construction? Diversion from landfill isn't enough and there's money to be made. With Chris Clarke (SCAPE)
In the UK every day the construction industry produces enough waste to fill a football stadium. Rightly, former guest, Chris Clarke (SCAPE) has got a bee in his bonnet...
Net zero neighbourhoods and financing change, with Cat Magill (Living Places)
Something-like twelve months on from inception we thought we'd catch up with what's happening at Living Places, the multi-disciplinary, impact-focused consultancy co-f...
Running a successful retrofit one-stop-shop isn't easy but it can be done, with Caroline Ashe Brady (KORE Retrofit)
This week's guest is Caroline Ashe Brady of KORE Retrofit in Ireland, one of the objectively successful one-stop-shop retrofit providers to have emerged over the past ...
The challenging life of a retrofit coordinator: problems with process, products, and performance, with returning champion Lisa Pasquale
Returning champion Lisa Ann Pasquale rejoins us on Zero Ambitions to talk about dogs and retrofit. Mainly retrofit though.Informed by Lisa's experiences as a retrofit ...
What should we do to get more women into retrofit? Well, we should get behind 'Her Retrofit Space', with Ellora Coupe (Her Own Space and now Her Retrofit Space)
Returning champion Ellora Coupe joins us to talk about the recent report that Her Own Space has published about the place of women in the retrofit sector, which is hea...
Building better performance: raising construction standards on site and in education, with Joseph Little (TUD)
This week we're going by Joseph Little, Head of Construction & Building Performance in the School of Architecture, Building and Environment at TU Dublin. He joined us ...
Retrofit as a movement for social change (there's more to it all than fabric and finance), with Dan Hill (Dark Matter Labs)
This week we're thinking about retrofit differently with Dan Hill from Dark Matter Labs (DML). Or rather, we're talking about retrofit's potential to become a movement...
Place-based hybrid finance to rebuild Ukraine and catalyse better building standards everywhere, with Iva Merheim Eyre (SMARTER4EU)
This week we're joined by Iva Merheim Eyre from SMARTER4EU to talk about her recently published report the Catalogue of Good Practices, a document that details a varie...
Peter Rickaby returns to ZAP: a lot of words about energy, retrofit, and natural building materials, all the way from South Africa
Jeff and Dan are joined by Dr. Peter Rickaby again. We were due a catch up so we recorded the conversation because he's always interesting. Peter should need little in...
The UK has a weird relationship with heat pumps: under appreciated influencers, wild pricing, and bad vibes. With Andrew Sissons (Nesta)
This week we're joined by Nesta's Deputy Mission Director, Andrew Sissons, to discuss his take on why the UK has such a weird relationship with heat pumps.It was inspi...
Building with straw on a continental scale and experiencing retrofit as a resident. With Cypren Edmunds (European Straw Building Association)
The other week we had a chance to have a conversation with Cypren Edmunds, President of the European Straw Building Association about building with straw, experiences ...
The energy performance of buildings matters, to me and EU and everyone you know, with Ciarán Cuffe (MEP)
The Recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive is now enshrined in EU law, which has big implications for the built environment everywhere. Even the South East o...
A new way to measure performance, negative energy use, and learning from disaster zones, with Kate Crawford (KLH Sustainability)
Kate Crawford is a building nerd who is obsessed with measuring performance. She's currently, Technical Director at KLH Sustainability, a multidisciplinary consultancy...
Designing for deconstruction using natural building materials. With Chloe Donovan (Natural Building Systems)
This week we're talking about modular construction and Natural Building Systems with MD Chloe Donovan.Chloe is a really interesting character with a fascinating produc...
Monitoring will make your buildings be worth more money, Utopi has proved it, with Falk Bleyl (CTO at Utopi)
Up next we're speaking with Falk Bleyl, CTO at Utopi, about their sensor-based data platform technology. He describes it as an ESG platform which is true but it massiv...
“Use less stuff”: embodied carbon, value chains and the potential for change in the Declaration de Chaillot. With Lloyd Alter (Carbon Upfront), Kelly Alvarez Doran (Ha/f Climate Design), and Will Arnold (The Institution of Structural Engineers)
Lloyd has been in Paris. He came back very enthused and excited by his experience there and wanted to communicate why to our listeners.“In the face of the climate emer...
What do we do about ‘the office’? A retrofit challenge we don't speak about enough. With Harry Browne and Séamus Guidera (RKD)
This week we got into an area of retrofit that feels neglected: commercial space. It's a subject we definitely touch upon but never really get into , so in order to re...
Fundamental problems in building design and how we manage thermal comfort, with Susan Roaf (Heriot-Watt; ICARB)
We are delighted to bring you a conversation with Professor Emeritus Susan Roaf, of Heriot-Watt University this week to talk about a bunch of fundamental problems in b...
Fabric fifth: rethinking the hierarchy of retrofit, with Nigel Banks (Octopus Energy)
This week we're joined by Nigel Banks, Technical Director - Zero Bills & Low Carbon Homes at Octopus Energy.Nigel joined us to discuss his recent article: Fabric Fifth...
Retrofit: "We need to tackle low hanging fruit first", so what does that mean? With Fionn Stevenson
We were blessed to enjoy a great conversation about retrofit and what we should consider our priorities, with the vastly experienced retrofit firebrand Fionn Stevenson...
Natural materials, healthier homes, and the culture of sustainable building, with Will Kirkman (Ecomerchant)
We enjoyed the company of Ecomerchant’s Will Kirkman a business that's specialised in sustainable and natural building materials for the building trade and consumers.W...
Engineering low-impact buildings and advice from self build, with Tara Fraser (Build Collective)
This week is all about the challenges of low-impact building in the sphere of self build with Tara Fraser, a chartered civil and structural engineer, and a director of...
Shady business #2: shading for housing in a changing climate, with Tom Dollard (Pollard Thomas Edwards)
Part two of our series on shading, this time with a return appearance from Tom Dollard of Pollard Thomas Edwards who joined us in January 2023 to talk about lazy think...
A view from COP28, and relearning how to be an architect for after the Oil Age, with Kelly Alvarez Doran (Half Climate Design; Architecture 2030 Senior Fellow)
With us this week is new friend, Kelly Alvarez Doran, via an introduction from Lloyd to talk about his experiences at COP28 and his carbon reduction consultancy Ha/f C...
Conservation-led retrofit and energy efficiency for working buildings, with with Heidi Hopper-Duffy and David Hughes (Iarnród Éireann)
This one is about conservation-led retrofit and the retrofit of commercial (or institutional) building stock. We were invited to see a recent Iarnród Éireann (Irish Ra...
The cost of sustainability, accounting for language, and the taxonomy, with Archie O'Donnell (KOSMOS)
The first of our Dublin field recordings is with Archie O'Donnell a long-time face green building in Ireland, a fella who Jeff has a lot of time for, and someone Alex ...
PH+ Revisited: that archive building in Hereford, the one that uses passive house preservation, with Nick Grant and Alan Clarke
This week we have Lloyd's latest Passive House Plus Revisited, a conversation with passive house heads Alan Clarke and Nick Grant about the passive house archive proje...