The competitive nature of property developers has benefitted the sustainability of buildings, with rival firms fighting to be “the greenest, the biggest and the best.”

That’s the view of Patrick Bellew, founder of environmental design consultants and building services engineers Atelier Ten, who has spoken exclusively to CLAD about how architects are reshaping the ways buildings interact with the environment.

He said: “In the early days, we worked with universities in the US. They might say they wanted to go for LEED Silver, but once they found out another university was going for Gold or Platinum, they’d step up too. It’s the same with property developers. They set out with fairly low ambitions. Once they understand what is involved, they start to compete to be the best.”

According to Bellew, sustainability was, just a few years ago, “seen as being a bit faddy and marginal,” but this has changed dramatically “because so many people across the whole industry are on board.”

“Once you get volume, things become more affordable and then everything starts to change more quickly,” he added.

Atelier Ten have worked on high-profile projects including Gardens by the Bay in Singapore and Snøhetta’s forthcoming San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Bellew remarked even “a super-prime development can offer really state-of-the-art engagement with sustainability.”

He cited a project his firm is working on in London – which is set to become the first LEED Platinum rated scheme in Europe – which will include a public sports facility with a swimming pool, a community centre, five acres of public squares, streets and gardens and over 400 homes.

“The introduction of standards like BREEAM and LEED has been a powerful force for change,” he said. “It’s not the answer to everything, but it has raised the bar across the industry to an enormous degree.

“Benchmarking systems have provided an extraordinary way of getting the whole supply chain up to speed. Twenty years ago, the company that supplied the plasterboard or hauled the trash on the site wouldn’t have had a clue what you meant if you’d talked about sustainability. Now they all know which LEED or BREEAM credits their particular service will get them and what they have to do to achieve them.”

Bellew told CLAD that Atelier Ten’s philosophy is to create well-integrated buildings with simple systems that work with the natural laws of physics to increase wellbeing, reduce energy consumption and contribute back to the greater environment.

He said despite the restrictions it can bring, sustainability does not have to come at the cost of attractive design.

“If you followed engineers’ solutions for the most sustainable houses, everyone would live in black boxes with a bit of managed ventilation, an LED light bulb and a solar panel on the roof. But where would the joy be without light and shadow and variety?

“That’s where architecture takes over. We work with architects to optimise what they’re trying to achieve, not to try to impose our engineering reductivism on them.”

An extensive interview with Patrick Bellew is featured on page 86 of the newly-released issue of CLADmag, which can be read via Digital Turning Pages and as a text PDF download.