news 2012

Is post-war industrial and pre-fab architecture worth preserving and renovating? To answer this question, architects conducted a three-year pioneering study into the restoration of modern buildings.

Many homes with poor energy efficiency are actually consuming far less energy than predicted, new research has found. The study has implications for national energy-saving policies and the economic viability of thermal retrofit programmes. This challenges the prevailing view that large cuts in energy consumption can be achieved by focusing purely on technical solutions, such as retrofitting homes.

All in one: A new electricity generating building component is being developed.

Excavation of 19,000-year-old hunter-gatherer remains, including a vast camp site, is fuelling a reinterpretation of the greatest fundamental shift in human civilisation - the origins of agriculture.

Some of the earliest evidence of prehistoric architecture has been discovered in the Jordanian desert, providing archaeologists with a new perspective on how humans lived 20,000 years ago. Inside the huts, we found intentionally burnt piles of gazelle horn cores, clumps of red ochre pigment and a cache of hundreds of pierced marine shells." —Dr Lisa Maher Archaeologists working in eastern Jordan have announced the discovery of 20,000-year-old hut structures, the earliest yet found in the Kingdom.