| John Ramshaw
Technical Editor, Architecture Today |
John Ramshaw
Technical Editor, Architecture Today |
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Happy New Year to all our readers! Like many of you, I suspect, the end of 2025 was partly spent ensuring that the year’s CPD was in order and up to date, before submission to the ARB. Despite spending more than two decades in a non-practicing role as AT Technical Editor, I have always managed to stay up to date with changes and developments in the construction industry through researching and writing a wide range of technical-based articles. |
Happy New Year to all our readers! Like many of you, I suspect, the end of 2025 was partly spent ensuring that the year’s CPD was in order and up to date, before submission to the ARB. Despite spending more than two decades in a non-practicing role as AT Technical Editor, I have always managed to stay up to date with changes and developments in the construction industry through researching and writing a wide range of technical-based articles. |
Looking back over my 2025 CPD submissions reminded me how much I have used and benefited from the learning modules on the School of Specification (SOS) website. Set up by Architecture Today in 2023, this independent e-learning platform is designed to help architects make informed, intelligent, and sustainable specification decisions. Stand out modules for me, personally, were Specifying colour and Introduction to the Urban Greening Factor – two diverse subjects, which I hitherto knew very little about. |
Looking back over my 2025 CPD submissions reminded me how much I have used and benefited from the learning modules on the School of Specification (SOS) website. Set up by Architecture Today in 2023, this independent e-learning platform is designed to help architects make informed, intelligent, and sustainable specification decisions. Stand out modules for me, personally, were Specifying colour and Introduction to the Urban Greening Factor – two diverse subjects, which I hitherto knew very little about. |
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Developed in partnership with Dulux Trade UK – AkzoNobel, Specifying colour is a fascinating primer, which provides a good understanding of how the artist colour wheel is constructed; how we see colour; the difference between warm and cool colours and how these affect spatial perception. Introduction to the Urban Greening Factor with Rob Beswick, Director, BD landscape architects, is another invaluable primer covering the main Urban Greening Factor typologies and strategies for incorporating urban greening into developments. This module, like several others, contributed to my mandatory CPD learning on sustainability, as did the Bennetts Associates’ Materials Library feature. |
Developed in partnership with Dulux Trade UK – AkzoNobel, Specifying colour is a fascinating primer, which provides a good understanding of how the artist colour wheel is constructed; how we see colour; the difference between warm and cool colours and how these affect spatial perception. Introduction to the Urban Greening Factor with Rob Beswick, Director, BD landscape architects, is another invaluable primer covering the main Urban Greening Factor typologies and strategies for incorporating urban greening into developments. This module, like several others, contributed to my mandatory CPD learning on sustainability, as did the Bennetts Associates’ Materials Library feature. |
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Director Peter Fisher and architect Alexandra Francis (now project manager at Opera) provide an enthralling insight into how one of the UK’s leading B-Corp certified practices is continuing to evolve (across multiple offices), and how it approaches the increasingly complex subject of environmental analysis and benchmarking. On this, Fisher is particularly eloquent: ‘There’s a danger that you can end up with too much environmental data on too many different areas, which can be confusing. It’s always worth remembering that there are basically three material sources: you can reuse it; you can grow it; or you can mine it/dig it up. And in terms of environmental impact it’s: mining bad, reusing good, and growing somewhere in between.” Wise words as we head into 2026. |
Director Peter Fisher and architect Alexandra Francis (now project manager at Opera) provide an enthralling insight into how one of the UK’s leading B-Corp certified practices is continuing to evolve (across multiple offices), and how it approaches the increasingly complex subject of environmental analysis and benchmarking. On this, Fisher is particularly eloquent: ‘There’s a danger that you can end up with too much environmental data on too many different areas, which can be confusing. It’s always worth remembering that there are basically three material sources: you can reuse it; you can grow it; or you can mine it/dig it up. And in terms of environmental impact it’s: mining bad, reusing good, and growing somewhere in between.” Wise words as we head into 2026. |
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