Our new postgraduate courses continue to take shape, the courses in Sustainability and Behaviour Change, Sustainability and Ecology are now fully validated by our university partner, Liverpool John Moores University, whilst MSc Green Building is currently going through validation by the University of East London.
Offers practical experience of sustainable building materials and methods, as well as covering the theory behind the selection and use of materials, energy flows, site selection and preparation phases, waste management and project management.
This programme provides a scientific understanding of the issues surrounding the protection and rehabilitation of nature, whilst maintaining essential or useful ecosystem services. It looks at landscape management and local habitat management practices, exploring the potential values and limitations of habitat restoration, rewilding, species reintroduction, biodiversity, conservation, health and nature, and urban green infrastructure.
Explores how we can best bring about the changes that are needed to address the environmental crisis. The course draws on theories of behavioural science and social and systems models to explore behaviour change theories at all levels, including personal, organisational, community, institutional and governmental.
Other programmes on offer
These new programmes are taught alongside CAT’s existing postgraduate degrees in architecture, energy, sustainability and adaptation, with many of the modules shared with other courses, creating a rich mix of learning opportunities. A range of modules specifically designed for the new programmes will bring together lectures from respected leaders in these areas with CAT’s usual mix of practical, informative, accessible teaching.
You’ll find more information about these and other courses from CAT’s Graduate School of the Environment on our website.
An award-winning company set up by CAT graduates is creating sustainable building materials from by-products of UK-grown crops. Technical director Euan Lochhead tells us more.
IndiNature is an Edinburgh-based sustainable construction materials manufacturer, founded by a team including two alumni of CAT’s Graduate School of the Environment – Scott Simpson and Euan Lochhead – plus two business friends Sam Baumber and Ewan Mealyou.
The IndiNature team, l-r: Sam Baumber, Ewan Mealyou, Scott Simpson, Euan Lochhead
While working in community development, Managing Director Scott Simpson came across people living in Dickensian housing conditions. Many homes he visited would be damp, cold and mouldy, with occupants often at risk of fuel poverty. This experience moved Scott to enrol on an MSc course at CAT, where he was introduced to low impact building methods that could alleviate the problems faced by neighbourhoods with poor housing.
Learning about hemp-lime composites (or ‘hempcrete’), Scott found that this material in particular solved all of these health and environmental problems better than most, leading him to focus his thesis on hempcrete blocks. This involved working in a lab exploring hygrothermal (heat and moisture transfer) properties of lime-based and unfired clay-based blocks.
After graduating in 2014, Scott teamed up with Technical Director Euan Lochhead to put the theory into practice by embarking on a deep-green retrofit and loft conversion of his 1930s cavity wall constructed flat with natural materials. The flat was completely gutted and rebuilt, including the addition of a solar thermal hot water system.
Data-logging and monitoring of the flat after the retrofit has proven that the natural materials are passively maintaining comfortable internal temperatures and humidity (almost perfectly, day and night, all year round) in addition to slashing the heating bills to a quarter of the cost of an equivalent three bedroom home.
However, Scott and Euan found that most of the natural materials they used had to be imported because there was a lack of comparable products made in the UK, so they decided to found Industrial Nature to provide a local alternative.
Furthering the results of Scott’s MSc thesis, the company has been developing its first product, IndiBloc. With this versatile product Industrial Nature hopes to bring hempcrete into the mainstream of the UK construction industry by overcoming the long curing times and labour intensive installation procedures associated with wet cast hempcrete. In new build applications, the large, lightweight blocks are constructed in a continuous external leaf abutting a timber frame, replacing both structure and insulation found in typical timber cavity wall construction.
Diagram showing IndiBloc installed in a building
In addition to quick, thermal-bridge-free installation, this breathable wall passively regulates internal humidity, improving air quality and reducing demand on mechanical heating and humidity control systems. Furthermore, the vapour permeability of the blocks allows water vapour within the wall to diffuse to the external environment, protecting the long term integrity of the timber structure by safely controlling moisture content in the wall.
Amazingly the benefits of IndiBloc are achieved utilising a low value, left-over crop material: the woody core of UK sourced hemp plants, a by-product from the textile industry. This results in a better than zero carbon product that uses no petrochemicals, produces no toxins and is manufactured close to its market.
The company has partnered with the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre, and Scott is resident at the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation. After securing a range of funding, including the Scottish Edge Awards and Climate KIC, Industrial Nature are now developing two further products: natural fibre ‘batt’ insulation using innovative binders, and an insulating material using advanced biotechnology. Combined, all these products will form a fully certified UK manufactured construction system. Funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the biotech research is being carried out in partnership with the University of Edinburgh.
IndiNature is developing and manufacturing locally made products which are healthy for the planet and for people.
In 2018 IndiNature is looking to increase funding and to add sales to the pipeline as they move closer to bringing the products to market later this year – please get in touch with Scott or Euan if you have a building project in mind!
