Waltham Forest College
Location
London Borough of Walthamstow
Service Areas
Year
2025
Client
Waltham Forest College
Architect
Studio DERA
Passive cooling strategy
Passive cooling
Low energy performance
Healthy spaces
Circular economy and reuse
The Project
The Green Engineering Building is a proposed five-storey addition to Waltham Forest College. It brings together specialist labs, classrooms and workshops to deliver high-quality education spaces designed around low-carbon construction, retrofit and renewable energy training.
The Brief
Our brief was to assess and guide the scheme’s environmental performance. This included overheating analysis, energy strategy, air quality, circular economy and materiality guidance and embodied carbon assessment in line with Greater London Authority (GLA), Department for Education (DfE) and Waltham Forest policy requirements.
The Solution
Love Design Studio worked closely with Studio Dera from early concept stage to embed sustainability principles throughout the design.
We completed detailed overheating analysis, fabric optimisation and full energy modelling to develop an energy strategy based on passive design, high-performance insulation and low-carbon systems. This included an air-source heat pump and MVHR system.
Our materiality guidance focused on reducing embodied carbon through the reuse of existing elements, such as the ground floor slab and brickwork, and the specification of bio-based materials. We also supported the specification of a primarily timber structure to allow future disassembly and flexibility.
In addition, we assessed air quality, shaped the healthy-spaces strategy and coordinated greening and SuDS measures to improve wellbeing, biodiversity and long-term site resilience.
The Result
The scheme achieves sets strong performance targets, meeting DfE targets and aligning with the RIBA 2030 climate challenge benchmarks.
It establishes a high-performing, low-carbon educational environment that supports green skills development and advances the borough’s sustainability ambitions.