Selected Retrofit Projects
Community Retrofit House
Architectural Lead
NEP’s Green Meadows Project
Green Meadows Community Retrofit House is a live building project designed to train residents up with retrofit skills and embed these skills in to the local community. The building will be used to run DIY and insulation workshops.
The building will be retrofitted with bio-based materials suited to its traditional construction. Workshops will include, hempcrete block as IWI, wood fibre board as IWI, lime plaster workshops, insulating your loft and floor.
As a typical Victorian Nottingham Terrace the building will be an exemplar for the community and for the city.
Project Team: Alice Grant, Darren Barker. Model by Will Harvey.
Insulation Guide + Archetype Study
Architectural Lead
NEP’s Green Meadows Project
To encourage Retrofit in the Meadows area of Nottingham, as part of Green Meadows project Victorian Insulation Guides are designed to give householder the knowledge they new to insulated their homes and give them the confidence to talk to their builders about what the right materials are to use. The service is backed up by a tool share, regular DIY workshops, and home plans which will help residents make informed decisions and ultimately make their homes warmer, healthier and cheaper to heat.
The guides include information on how to deal with common tricky detail (e.g. where your roof insulation meets the wall insulation) and have been born out of surveying over 140 Victorian houses in the Meadows. This has allowed us to make informed design choices across different archetypes, minimising risk for residents.
This is also backed up by an Energy Audit of the Meadows Area, which is helping us understand the impact retrofit can have at scale.
Download an insulation guide here.
Project Team: Alice Grant and Jacob Kelly.
Retrofit Right
Project Architect
UK Hempcrete
UK Hempcrete’s Retrofit Right service is designed to expand on their provision of retrofit consultancy services specialising in traditionally constructed buildings, Retrofit Right is dedicated to marrying historical preservation with cutting-edge sustainability through the use of bio-based insulation materials.
I helped develop the Retrofit Right service by creating a PAS2035 compatible medium term plan and designing the internal processes. It aims to bring together UK Hempcrete’s expertise in bio-based materials, energy efficiency and sustainability in a step by step, one stop shop service. This project allows UK Hempcrete to deliver bespoke retrofit solutions that meet their clients’ needs while contributing to the UK’s carbon reduction targets.
Project Team: Alice Grant Jake Westmoreland, Alex Sparrow and Liam Donohoe.
Sheffield Homes (various)
Architectural Assistant / Architect
Chiles, Evans + Care Architects
A key role during my time at Chiles Evans + Care Architects was to work with a local Housing Association client on numerous projects to retrofit their existing housing stock transforming old buildings into safer, warmer, healthier homes.
Broomhall Houses
This project looked to transform a pastiche 1990s purpose built 9 bedroom hostel in to two 4 bedroomed family homes. Technically this project was hugely challenging as it concerns a material change of use and a prominent site in a conservation area.
Involvement: RIBA Stage 1-4
The Outhouse
The project to the right turns a small outhouse into a one bedroom family home. Delivering well considered homes and spaces with in the confines of limited budgets is as fulfilling as it is challenging. Many of these projects will not happen without a balancing of these priorities and a commitment to a retrofit first approach.
Involvement: RIBA Stage 3
