Review of 2022 – Latest

Review of 2022

It's been quite the year at Elliott Wood - from breaking ground and topping out, to expanding our service offering and developing new tools and research to benefit the industry. Here are a few highlights from a busy 2022!

Project Highlights

We saw some fantastic projects come to fruition this year, in particular the Quadrangle redevelopment project at King's College London with Hall McKnight, as well as our carbon-negative residential project, Orford Mews (known as The Arbour), for GS8, which garnered acclaim in The Times.

Two of our most significant adaptive reuse projects have also made substantial progress in 2022: Tower Hamlets Town Hall, the restoration and extension of the Grade II listed former Royal London Hospital building to provide new offices and public services for Tower Hamlets Borough Council; and The OWO, which will see the former Ministry of Defence offices at Whitehall transformed into a luxury hotel and apartments. We can’t wait to see both these buildings completed in the new year.

2022 saw many of our projects winning recognition, with 34 shortlistings and wins in total.

Highlights include:

Activities & Initiatives

Speaking at the inaugural FOOTPRINT+ conference in Brighton, Penny Gowler and Gary Elliott set out our Too Little. Too Late. message; by RIBA Stage 0, the greatest opportunities for impact have already been missed, illustrating the importance of considering embodied carbon at portfolio level, in what is considered the crucial decade for our industry.

Our Too Little. Too Late. series of talks, hosted over five weeks in autumn, delved deeper into some of the most crucial opportunity areas, revealing how – with early engagement and a holistic, interdisciplinary approach – strategic decisions can significantly reduce carbon emissions and waste, and reduce the carbon footprint of the built environment.

2022 also saw the release of The Structural Carbon Tool Version 2.0, featuring updated advice on carbon factors, a revised approach to describing biogenic carbon in timber, and new content on embodied carbon in bridges, temporary works and replacement cycles. This was the first major update since the tool, developed by Elliott Wood with the IStructE, was donated to the industry in 2021.⁠

The Building Society

We are thrilled to see our collaborative coworking community for the built environment growing and evolving as new ways of working become the norm. The Building Society first opened its doors in 2019 and, alongside a thriving community in its founding location, Fitzrovia, this year saw its expansion to include a second location in Wimbledon. The Building Society supports a collaborative community of like-minded individuals and organisations interested in doing better things for the built environment, people and the planet. With this second location, the organisation can bring together even more thinkers and makers with the shared purpose of engineering a better society.

We look forward to seeing what 2023 has in store! Warm wishes for the new year, from all of us at Elliott Wood.