The design & Access statement is used by Architects and Designers to define a buildings intention, how a design will fit into a location, how it will work, look feel and react to its surroundings, and perhaps how the locality will react to it.
It often describes the materials seen on the outside of the building, the balance of components and how they might mellow. The height and symmetry of an elevation in relation to neighbouring buildings.
In effect it's a planning statement, a required document when making a planning application. But it can be so much more. It should be a live document, being updated as the design evolves, and in some planning applications this happens, but the Design and access statement seems to be a one-off document never looked at once the application is made.
The planning portal, the online website where electronic planning applications are submitted states
"A design and access (DAS) statement is a short report accompanying and supporting a planning application. They provide a framework for applicants to explain how a proposed development is a suitable response to the site and its setting, and demonstrate that it can be adequately accessed by prospective users."
But is it time to expand this document? Climate Change and the buildings input into the global problem offers the Design and Access Statements a unique position to outline the way a design might or would deal with emissions, from the initial material buildup, the delivery and storage, installation, use over the buildings lifetime, and eventual death, and how the embedded carbon, might be contained.
Should this be added to all buildings, a simple yes, all applications from simple extensions that might not need a planning application, to the large and complex?
It's a document all clients should read, it might also act to define a clients role in dealing with Climate Change, there role as part of the CDM regulations a heap of simple often overlooked things like how to clean the building, or at least posting a link to an operation manual.
Above all, it will force planners to take some of the responsibility for allowing designs that add to or even drive climate change.
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