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Cork House Featured in New UIA World Congress of Architects Book

12 November 2020

Cork House, a project designed by The Bartlett’s Matthew Barnett Howland and Oliver Wilton, and Dido Milne of CSK Architects, is featured in An Architecture Guide to the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

Exterior of Cork House - by Ricky Jones

The book, which exists in two volumes, identifies these Goals and provides architectural case studies that demonstrate how the built environment interacts with them. The goals represent concerns of scalable complexity, from the direct need for clean water and sanitation to systemic and ambitious challenges like climate action and sustainable cities and communities.

Sited in Eton, Berkshire, Cork House features as a case study for responsible consumption and production. The first of its kind, it was designed in a kit format, with parts assembled by hand on site without mortar or glue. Its external form is built of load-bearing, bio-renewable, expanded cork, which is made with the by-product from cork forestry. The building is carbon-negative at completion and is “a holistic attempt to reconcile human habitation with natural resource systems”.

Cork House won a RIBA National Award and the RIBA South Sustainability Award, and was longlisted for RIBA House of the Year.

The book is free to download, and is the outcome of a partnership between a number of bodies:

  • Danish Association of Architects
  • The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation
  • The UIA Commission on the UN Sustainable Development Goals
  • The Institute of Architecture and Technology

It was produced in advance of, and in collaboration with, the World Congress of Architects 2023, which is presented by the International Union of Architects.

Oliver Wilton is Associate Professor of Environmental Design at The Bartlett. Dido Milne and Matthew Barnett Howland are directors at CSK Architects, and Matthew is also a postgraduate thesis tutor at The Bartlett.

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Image: Exterior of Cork House, photography by Ricky Jones