What’s design innovation?
Design innovation delivers benefits such as overcoming challenges, improving functionality, and enhancing user experiences.
The trend in recent decades for office buildings to be open plan, rather than consisting of numerous closed rooms, would once have been considered striking evidence of design innovation, for example.
But the term “design innovation” is actually something of a misnomer, on at least two counts.
Firstly, it goes way beyond covering the aesthetic aspects of a building, vital though these undoubtedly are.
Secondly, it doesn’t mean taking risks with aspects such as a construction’s robustness or security. Design innovation techniques may not be traditional, but they’re applied by fully qualified, experienced professionals, and involve materials that have passed all the usual exhaustive industry tests, covering safety and other matters.
Why is design innovation on the rise?
One area where user demands and technology – allied to massive pressures from outside the construction industry – have combined to prompt exciting design innovation in recent years is sustainability, the subject closest to our hearts.
Design innovation has responded to the cry for green buildings by delivering advances such as using materials from renewable sources or that emit little or no carbon, taking full advantage of natural light, incorporating technology to save water and power, and finding ways to minimise waste.
What design innovation services do we offer?
Why are design innovation solutions becoming essential?
As we’ve seen, design innovation often involves the use of non-traditional materials and practices which are less environmentally damaging than their predecessors.
This is vital, as construction is currently responsible for a massive 40% of all carbon emissions, both in the UK and globally, making it by far the worst offender among industrial sectors.
One reason for the sector’s proportion being so high is it’s responsible for two types of emission.
That grim picture explains why construction sector organisations are under intensifying pressure from groups such as governments, the public and investors to reduce emissions from all aspects of their operations.
Embodied discharges are those associated with the use of conventional carbon-generating materials when new buildings are designed and created. These include cement, steel, aluminium and plastics. According to the World Green Building Council (WGBC), embodied emissions from buildings comprise about 11% of the world’s overall carbon discharges.
Net zero means any unavoidable emissions being fully offset through the people and organisations responsible for them by investing in projects that balance the damage, such as initiatives involving tree-planting or generating energy from renewable sources. Perpetrators can do this via instruments such as carbon credits.
The UK government, for example, has made a legally binding commitment that the country will have net zero carbon emissions by 2050 (the Scottish administration has set its own equivalent date of 2045).
The government is now regularly putting in place new incremental legal restrictions and requirements on individuals and businesses that will lead to its 2050 target being met.
If it’s going to fulfil its duties to legislators, the planet and humanity, the construction industry must now step up to the plate in multiple ways…and fast. It’s hard to see how this can happen without design innovation solutions continuing to be developed and adopted at an ever-increasing pace.
