Stirling Prize-winner Mikhail Riches will only work on zero-carbon projects from now on, the studio told Dezeen.
Co-founder Annalie Riches said the practice was committed to improving the environmental performance of its projects, after winning the UK's top architecture prize for the low-energy Goldsmith Street development.
"As a practice, we don't want to do anything that doesn't aim for zero carbon now," Riches told Dezeen.
Goldsmith Street achieves the rigorous Passivhaus standard for energy efficiency. Speaking at Mikhail Riches' north London studio, Riches said the studio now wanted to go further, and will aim to minimise the embodied carbon of all its upcoming projects.
Goldsmith Street is a low-energy social housing scheme that won the 2019 Stirling Prize "The next thing we need to think about is carbon in construction," said Riches. "It would be great to start to think about ways that we could improve on concrete and foundations, and find bricks that don't involve burning fossil fuels," she continued.
Embodied carbon refers to the total carbon dioxide generated by the construction of a building, including emissions created by extracting, processing and transporting building materials.
Her comments echoed those of partner David Mikhail, who said that reducing embodied carbon was the next step for sustainable architecture.
"I think we all know we have a climate and a species-loss emergency," he said when accepting the Stirling P...