Bere Admin May 15th, 2007
PassivHaus Study Tour
21 & 22 May 2007
Hanover, Germany
This seminar is aimed at housing professionals and professional bodies whom are involved in lowenergy housing. Pro-active company directors, decision makers, architects, contractors and developers will be represented at the study tour.
BRE is offering a unique opportunity, as a part of this study tour, to experience first hand what it means to live, work and design PassivHaus dwellings.
DG May 15th, 2007
The RIBA last night presented bere:architects with a London Region Award for the Focus House project in North London. The house will now be put forward for the RIBA National Awards in June.
Bere Admin May 11th, 2007
Concept
The amazing thing about Comfort-Haus is that it doesn’t need a boiler. It has no radiators, no underfloor heating or air conditioning, yet it stays warm in winter and cool in summer. With insulation three times better than current building standards and air-tightness 14 times better than building regulations, the heat from people, appliances and the sun are retained in the building to maintain a comfortable year-round temperature.
Community
Comfort-Haus has been designed to allow communities to grow and evolve. It is easily adaptable to changes in its occupant’s requirements and allows people to grow old among their lifelong friends. The whole ground floor of Comfort-Haus can easily be converted into an autonomous “granny flat” with a carer accommodated above, so that families and communities can remain intact. Continue Reading »
Bere Admin May 4th, 2007
By Amanda Birch
Building Design
4 May 2007
James Bond eat your heart out. I’m standing in a vast, 12m x 12m x 13.4m, brick-built bascule chamber 5m below water level and a 420-tonne counterweight is slowly moving towards me.
London’s Tower Bridge is being raised and like Bond, I will manage to get out of this fix in the nick of time. When the bridge is fully raised, the counterweight will stop with inches to spare.
I am watching this dramatic event unfold in the underbelly of the grade I listed 1894 structure with Justin Bere, director of Bere Architects. We aren’t here just to witness a wonder of Victorian engineering: Bere has identified the bascule chamber as a source to provide cool air passively into Tower Bridge’s ticket office.
Bere Architects was commissioned in 2005 by the City of London to upgrade Squire & Partners’ 1993 entrance and ticket office building. “Our brief was to make the ticket office a pleasant place to work,” says Bere. Continue Reading »