A wide range of interesting articles that help you make informed decisions and deliver the best projects for your clients authored by our team of NBS subject specialists and construction industry contributors.
Sustainability
NBS Guide: Embodied Carbon Calculations
Learn how to align your carbon assessments with BIM workflows. This guide to Embodied Carbon Calculations, developed by NBS and Circular Ecology, sets out a practical, standardised approach to calculating the embodied carbon of building materials and products, and how to apply this data to BIM objects.
Must Reads
design-and-specification
The hidden cost of compliance: why architects are demanding a new era of product transparency
Few pieces of legislation have reshaped the UK construction industry as significantly as the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA). Introduced to improve accountability, traceability and safety standards ...
Design and Specification
Brick slip cladding systems – the need for robust specification
This article from the NBS technical team outlines specification for brick slip technology, including history, technology, design, safety and testing.
design-and-specification
When product data creates risk, AluK delivers the clarity and support architects need
The need to build more homes, more quickly, has not changed. If anything, the pressure has intensified. However, the conversation around Modern Methods of Construction has evolved.
Darwin Centre, Natural History Museum
200 years on from Charles Darwin's birth and 150 years since the publication of his On the Origin of Species, the latest extension to the Natural History Museum in London – the new Darwin Centre – opened to the public in September 2009.
Design and SpecificationVideo
Reduce embodied carbon from the start
Measure, compare and reduce upfront embodied carbon using trusted UK data and pre-built assemblies.
Renzo Piano's Shard is the tallest building in Western Europe. This programme looks at how engineers WSP helped the architect realise his design in one of the most constrained sites imaginable. The ...
Design and SpecificationVideo
BIM and its potential to support sustainable building
Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been advocated for its potential delivery of more innovative, cost-efficient buildings through more integrated information and collaboration. Yet the inherent ...
Design and SpecificationDigital Transformation
Engineering the Sainsbury Laboratory
Stanton Williams' Stirling Prize-winning Sainsbury Laboratory is a state-of-the-art facility for Cambridge University. This programme looks at how the Sainsbury Laboratory was built. It examines the ...
Design and SpecificationVideo
Using Uniclass 2
Uniclass2 is nearing the final version of its first iteration, so it is time to look at how it might be used. John Gelder, Head of content development and sustainability, explores the issue.
Design and SpecificationUniclass
Peckham Library revisited
The Will Alsop-designed Peckham Library won the 2000 Stirling Prize, wowing the judging panel with its ‘eye-catching’ design. We revisit the library to see how it was built and to remind ourselves of ...
Design and SpecificationVideo
Subscribe
Facade Retention
Facade retention – the removal and renewal of a building's innards, walls, columns and floors while retaining its original front or outer walls – plays an important role in preserving the ...
Design and SpecificationConstruction Products
Fire risk during construction - design and specification implications
Following a number of recent major fires on construction sites, Neil Storkes, NBS Technical Author and Architect, summarizes the requirements of the CDM Regulations, current fire legislation and HSE ...
Design and SpecificationSpecification
An historic building day (2/2)
In the concluding part of a two part series Emma Humphrey shares her experience as a budding building detective...
Design and SpecificationHistoric Buildings
An historic building day (1/2)
In the first of a two part series Emma Humphrey shares her experience as a budding building detective...
Design and SpecificationHistoric Buildings
Acoustic treatment in offices
An understanding of how sound behaves in modern offices, and how to control excessive airborne sound, or noise as it then becomes known, is essential. Through the use of computer modelling, noise ...
Design and SpecificationConstruction Products
Secured by Design
Following the release of Oscar Newman's book "Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design" in 1972, the idea that architecture could be used to limit criminal activity became popular. ...
