ACAN Existing Buildings Group
80% of buildings that will exist in 2050 have already been built. Right now, almost 30 million dwellings and 2 million commercial and public buildings account for around 20% of the UK’s CO2e emissions. The magnitude of responsibility on existing buildings to reduce their contribution to emissions can not be underestimated.
Our purpose is to increase awareness of this responsibility by developing and supporting campaigns that will bring about change in policy and practice. Our existing building stock must be retrofitted in order to meet the UK’s climate change commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Group Coordinators
Federica Romeo Beattie
Federica is an architect and Passivhaus designer. Her focus is to drive meaningful change with a dedication to a more sustainable and resilient world. Head of Sustainability at Studio PDP, she supports the practice’s projects and champions the practice’s commitment to retrofitting existing buildings and upskilling design teams.
As a Passivhaus consultant, Federica’s experience ranges from design verification for large-scale, new-build residences to retrofit strategies to achieve EnerPHit certification. In previous roles, her key sector experience included all types of residential, workplace, and hospitality projects. Federica has worked on award-winning masterplans, successful planning consents for large mixed-use developments, planning, design development, and construction overview for a central London hotel, and office refurbishments in the City of London.
Federica is a technical studies Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Arts and is a Construction Collage Facilitator.
Deepthi Ravi
Deepthi is an overseas qualified Architect with a specialization in Sustainable Design from the Architectural Association. At PLP Architecture, she assists in designs at early stages of the project, to be informed by a narrative of Building Performance and Whole Life Carbon Strategies. She has been involved in assisting innovation through research and computation optimization. She has been recognized in 2024’s Edie 30 under 30 cohort for Young Leaders in Sustainability and was invited for an interview with FutureBuild for their Podcast Series.
Mark Rowe
Mark is an Architect who has designed and delivered multiple award winning buildings across all scales and sectors over the course of the last twenty years at Penoyre & Prasad. Now, in the context of the built environment’s need to rapidly decarbonise if it is to stay within our legally binding sectoral government carbon budget, he has founded less.eco to help clients, funders, contractors, designers and future architects understand how we can radically reduce our carbon emissions and wider environmental impact, particularly through the lens of spatial sufficiency; what if the buildings we already have are enough for our needs?
CURRENT PROJECTS:
UK Demolition Map
The UK Demolition Map is an interactive website for mapping the value of historic buildings threatened with demolition in the 21st century, in the UK. The Demolition Map aims to gather information on threatened, demolished, or saved buildings, all across the country, helping our campaign to stop demolition, as a critical step towards Net Zero! It is an exciting project spearheaded by Alice Brown.
Community Retrofit Initiative
The Community Retrofit Map is a digital platform designed to showcase and amplify community-led retrofit initiatives across the UK. By providing an interactive and user-friendly space, this platform will promote collaboration and knowledge-sharing among community groups, organizations, policymakers, and other stakeholders.
Hands-On Workshop on Retrofit using Natural Building Materials
Innovation is key to reducing carbon emissions in the built environment. Reducing carbon emissions in the built environment starts with innovation. Since over 80% of buildings already exist, retrofitting with bio-based materials is key to sustainability. Join us for an immersive, hands-on workshop where we explore practical ways to integrate natural materials into existing buildings.
UPCOMING EVENTS, RESOURCES & LINKS
Hug the Building- Campaign against demolition – UK Demolition Map
Launched May 8th 2025 – read about the event here.
Climate Emergency Conservation Area Retrofit by Chris Proctor
Read more here.
Updates on the group on Miro
🗓 Thematic Group Meetings
We hold bi-weekly meetings on Tuesdays 6 – 7pm GMT, but join our WhatsApp chat to stay in the loop and for other events to get involved in. For more details on how to volunteer with us or to speak with us directly, you can contact us at existingbuildings@architectscan.org
Join Our Existing Buildings Discord Group
