Make buildings better

This competition has closed. Thank you to everyone that entered.

Designing Buildings Wiki and BSRIA are looking for fresh, innovative ideas from all disciplines in response to the question:

How can we make buildings better?

We are looking for original ideas for improving the performance of buildings in use. We want short answers, not long essays. Your idea might only take a paragraph, or even a sentence to explain, and you don’t need to be a seasoned property professional to enter.

The winner will receive £500 worth of BSRIA membership, training or publications, and along with 4 runners-up, will be featured in the July edition of BSRIA's Delta T magazine and on Designing Buildings Wiki.

Entering is simple – you can do it in 2 mins. All you have to do is register on Designing Buildings Wiki and type your idea into the box at the bottom of the registration page where it says ‘MORE ABOUT ME’. That’s it. If you want to change your idea, or if you're already registered, just log in, click ‘Edit My Profile’ and type your idea into the 'MORE ABOUT ME' box.

The competition closes on Wednesday 18 May.

A bit more detail about the question

The UK is not on track to halve greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2025 or to achieve an 80% reduction by 2050. This affects our contribution to the COP21 goal agreed in Paris last year for keeping global warming well below 2 degrees centigrade.

47% of UK carbon emissions are generated by, or influenced by, the construction industry, and 80% of those emissions are from buildings in use. So if the performance of buildings does not improve, we are unlikely to achieve our emissions targets.

But buildings in use continue to consume far more energy than is predicted during design. The latest figures from Innovate UK’s Building Performance Evaluation Programme found the emissions from the homes they assessed were 2.6 times higher than their building regulations calculations, and for non-domestic buildings were 3.8 times higher.

Something is very wrong, and radical change is needed.

So it’s time to dust off all those wild ideas you dreamt up in the middle of the night, write down the answers to the world’s problems that usually occur to you in the pub, and tell us what can be done to reduce the emissions of buildings in use.

Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

• Introduce smarter and greener technology.
• Tighten regulations.
• Ration carbon.
• Create legal consequences for poor performance.
• Control unregulated energy use.
• Improve training for specifiers, installers and users.
• Monitor correct operation and share lessons learned.

Entries will be judged by representatives of BSRIA and Designing Buildings Wiki, based on originality, practicality and compliance with the competition terms and conditions.

If you’ve got any questions, email us at [email protected].