Dylan Fardon

Carbon vs. Heritage // Aberdeen

'Carbon vs. Heritage' seeks to challenge the Grade A listing of eight, 1960s social housing tower blocks in Aberdeen by exploring the possibilities of retrofitting one of the pairs. The project also outlines a new social housing scheme showing how the towers could be reconnected to their context using additional massing. The project proposes a redesign of ground floor spaces to provide new, public amenities, supporting the proposed, south-facing apartment extensions fabricated from low-impact materials including a timber structure, hempcrete insulation and kelp-polymer cladding. The apartments are expanded, stripped out and are arranged to provide a mixture of tenure such that it maintains the existing, duplex "cross-over" arrangement, central to the architects' original concept.