Elettra Bordonaro, Principal and Creative Director at Light Follows Behaviour and Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), joins forces with Marina Milosev (BEng MLA) Planning Policy & Gender Specialist. Together, they delve into the often-overlooked realm of urban design, shedding light on the impact of public lighting on safety and gender equality.

Reducing the energy consumption of buildings doesn’t have to be complicated or prohibitively expensive, as a new approach to cutting fuel bills and lowering carbon emissions is demonstrating, says Dominic Wish, HMX UK’s Technical Director.

Fenestration is an important part of the building envelope and one that needs careful consideration to ensure that aesthetic appeal is carefully balanced with increasingly stringent performance requirements. Andrew Cooper, National Specification Manager from Senior Architectural Systems, one of the UK’s largest privately-owned manufacturers of aluminium windows, doors and curtain wall solutions, provides a checklist for compliance and how early engagement can help.

There’s more to meeting the latest requirements of Part L than meets the eye and, as John Mellor from leading UK building materials manufacturer Glidevale Protect explains, ‘hidden protectors’, such as reflective breather membranes and vapour control layers, can make a difference to the thermal efficiency of a building.

Behind every modern, imaginatively-designed brick facade is likely to be a range of innovative masonry support. It’s the unsung hero of many wonderful private and public buildings; the unseen aesthetic and structural aid. But what else do we know about these vital, non-visible products? This feature provides an overview of how and why masonry support is needed in buildings and how it has allowed architects to set new parameters in brickwork design, says Ovidiu Bruzan, Senior Structural Engineer at IG Masonry Support.