Sustainable Architecture
Our journey so far

Ikonografik Design’s journey towards sustainable architecture began with the founder, Nathan Oliver, during his architectural studies in the 1990’s. It became evident that buildings were significant contributors to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Concerned about this environmental impact, Nathan sought to understand and address the issue. An elective module on Low Energy Design provided initial insights, which deepened during his undergraduate dissertation focusing on the limitations of domestic energy conservation. A key finding was the critical role of human behavior and how they manage energy, is often overlooked in favor of technological solutions. Embodied energy was often overlooked too. The biggest problem is often that end users of buildings rarely use the energy they have, wisely or well, simple changes to human behaviour and mindset can often result in the biggest benefits. These understandings preceded the widespread adoption of Passivhaus standards in the UK.

In the late 1990s, upon entering the professional world, Nathan endeavored to promote low energy design principles among clients, peers and colleagues. However, the industry’s limited interest and understanding of the associated costs created challenges. Nathan quickly discovered that many people weren’t interested or didn’t understand the benefits or need for this ‘new’ way of doing things, especially as the cost of the building works usually increased. As a result of this Nathan’s interest felt a bit stifled, he pulled back on promoting the benefits of low energy design and continued to work on large scale commercial buildings. These buildings were [still are] constructed from vast amounts of concrete, steel, glass, plastics and aluminium etc. often obtained from petrochemicals, and the bare minimum was done to comply with the Building Regulations.