Cagni Williams Architects has launched a sister practice, Cagni Williams Energy, to focus on project decarbonisation, and particularly decarbonising dense urban areas.
The practice believes this is the first time an architectural studio has established a sister company dedicated exclusively to energy and decarbonising the built environment.
The Cagni Williams Energy team will offer ‘research-based innovation, technical expertise, and a practical approach to providing the best, most effective energy solutions for refurbishment, repurposing, and retrofit projects, and new-build projects’.
The practice is currently working on The Sidney Street Heat Network (see photo), a pilot project that will decarbonise a dense London area while providing more affordable energy for residents – via connections from a ground source bore hole ambient loop to the heat pumps in homes and the stakeholder’s technical facility. It relies on boreholes dug deep beneath the public highway, connected via an ambient loop heat network, enabling multiple buildings to share renewable energy efficiently. Cagni Williams Energy says such a system ‘could be rolled out across the UK to decarbonise millions of homes’.
Cagni Williams’ founding director, Laura Carrara-Cagni, said: “Now clients have set proper environmental goals, it’s important that consultants can implement for them the best commercial and efficient-energy solution with their restructuring projects.”
The practice added: “The Sidney Street Heat Network project decarbonises a dense central London city area while providing affordable energy and helping the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea meet its Net Zero goals. This innovative urban project is designed to provide heating and cooling for 300 homes, plus a variety of other stakeholders, hospitals, a church, schools, and late living homes.”
