makeshift

In a year where global food and energy prices hit record highs - followed quickly by economies around the globe reaching the brink of collapse, we have be given a glimpse of the inevitable political and economic upheaval post-peak-oil. The Local Energy Network project (click for full project pdf) is inspired by and responds to some of the social and architectural implications of these fundamental changes from a community scale, tactical  position.

ENERGY

The national grid uses 5 watts of heat energy from coal or gas to deliver each 1 watt of electricity. This striking inefficiency of this has to be addressed to have any chance of meeting national & global carbon targets on climate change.

A national network requires vast upfront investment. A decentralised, local network is instead allowed to grow organically. It can therefore begin with a limited investment in a handful of Combined Heat and Power (CHP) terminals, and expand as more and more people appreciate the benefits of locally generated affordable heat and power.

REUSE

A key obstacle to the implementation of small, community-scale energy networks is the difficulty of establishing of establishing new communal areas, and for each area, siting a focal facility from which that energy-community might operate.

But infrastructures of that scale have existed before, and the problems posed by the dereliction of those infrastructures could well be a perfect fit for the community energy problem. Those infrastructures are, of course, community schools, and their historic catchment areas.

In the case of Sheffield, a perfect opportunity is presented by remaining Sheffield Board schools, evenly spaced around Sheffield's hillsides among the streets of terraced they once served. Following the 1870 education act, the Board schools formed an impressive network of grade 2 listed buildings across the city for almost a century. Most of them were later closed as a local side-effect of a high level government policy to consolidate more, smaller schools into fewer, larger ones. Particularly on the eastern side of the city, a whole string of these former schools across the city lie now vacant & vandalised after it was deemed cheaper to build brand-new education facilities than to upgrade historic infrastructure.

After serving as the heart of the local community for over a century, you cannot underestimate the negative impact of letting important community buildings rot, especially when they occupy such prominent positions in the city. 

Conservation and heritage has often been a subject dominated by conservative thinking. This project was about combining a need of an urban community with some local infrastructure that was sitting there just begging to find a new role, by reemploying of one such school as a local energy centre.

The former school sits as a hub in the centre of the network. The site hosts adult education, energy advice centre, as well as being the very first CHP terminal in the network. On-site workshops produce recycled insulation for use in local home improvements.

VALUES

Energy can no longer be treated as separate from culture, community, heritage, leisure etc - a way of thinking that we have grown up with since the birth of the modernist national-scale energy grids. The new era, where resources begin to become less reliable and more scarce, will require new values in terms of energy both the appearance and functionality of our, homes, streets and local infrastructure. 

Ann's Grove Local Energy Network was a Final-Year thesis project produced by Adam Park at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture.

To View Full Project PDF, click here.