“As an industry, we must continue to innovate with both the technologies going into service the buildings and the materials we specify upfront, to improve a hotels performance and minimise their carbon footprints.” explains Associate, Jonathan Southgate at his recent panel discussion with Cundall on the future of sustainability in hospitality.

Accompanied by other panellists from JLL and IHG, the panel contributed their thoughts on balancing sustainable hospitality with rising customer expectations and the current legislative landscape in the UK.

When asked on his key takeaways from the panel discussion, Jonathan made the point of the UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standard’s (UKNZCBS) targets are essential for our industry to align with the requirements of the Paris Agreement for all completed projects to be net zero in operation by 2030, with > 40% reduction in embodied carbon. “While they are ambitious, these targets are critical to embrace in order to drive drastic change in the way we go about design and development”.

“The UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standard won’t in itself drive the hospitality sector or any sector towards Net Zero, it will be societal expectations and commercial drivers. These are pushing corporate and financial governance towards Net Zero, creating a trickle down effect to individual projects and developments which will lead more project briefs to target Net Zero and Retrofit First approaches. What the Standard does do, is provide a verifiable baseline for each sector to work towards, which is a step in the right direction that we need to embrace and champion going forwards.”

Integrating sustainability into design is just as much about stewardship of our planet as it is about providing places that will inspire and promote wellness. Jonathan goes onto say, “as architects, we are well placed to drive this from a design perspective, through close multi-disciplinary collaboration with our engineering colleagues and clients to get the first principles right and set a project up for success.” 850mil 

Cundall emphasized, “The key learning from our insightful discussion was: whether you are an engineer, architect, developer, occupier, project manager, or quantity surveyor, we all have a part to play in order to make this planet greener.”