Gordon Hudson

The application of BREEAM in corporate real estate: A case study in the design of a city centre office development

Buildings are a substantial contributor towards CO2 levels, and design methods to make buildings much more energy efficient are evolving. In the UK, the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) has been in operation for over ten years. The scheme is intended to produce a label that distinguishes sustainable developments in the marketplace. This paper uses an in‐depth case study to examine the role of BREEAM in the design and marketing of a city centre office development. The influence of BREEAM in the design process and among the designers is seen as significant, but its influence in the property market is not explicit. The paper concludes that internal environmental conditions are increasingly important to occupiers, but evidence of sustainable development being led by the market is not observed in this case study.