Atkins, Richard Photo

Richard Atkins

PhD Student

Project title: Assessing environmental and financial equilibrium in the existing built environment.

Richard’s thesis is that buildings are agents for change. The questions we should ask of existing buildings and any proposed interventions, whether green-field, brown-field, conversions or alterations is:

What does this built asset do to sustain?
How can the sustaining qualities of the asset be maximised? Or conversely damaging qualities minimised?
What does it contribute as a part of the bigger system?
How does it change that system?

This built environment is not a static system. The positive and negative impacts of buildings will change over time and must be seen in the context of the wider environment. This environment is multi-dimensional.