BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) is the leading and most widely used environmental assessment method for buildings and communities. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable design and has become the most common measure used to describe a building’s environmental performance.

In this month’s edition, FC&A profiles The Edge in Amsterdam, Holland – the greenest building in the world according to BREEAM. The Edge was conceived by London-based PLP Architecture, in close collaboration with Deloitte and project developer OVG. The 15 storey building is a completely connected, eco-friendly hub, where workers control everything from finding a parking space to meeting their colleague via an intelligent app.

The building is powered by solar panels that produce more electricity than the project uses – in fact, The Edge uses 70% less electricity than a typical office building. Turn to page 10 to read how this was achieved.

To coincide with this, on page 18 Future Constructor & Architect hears from Martin Townsend, Director of Sustainability at BRE Global. Here he looks at how assessment methodology will be likely to affect and interlink with future standards and best practice initiatives.

Elsewhere in this issue, Mobilane explains how you can bring facades to life, ChapmanBDSP looks at the impact of modern design trends on fire safety and British Gypsum discusses why today’s homes must work harder.

I hope you enjoy this issue. Don’t forget, you can also access all of the magazine’s features, product news and supplier information at your fingertips via Future Constructor & Architect’s state-of-the-art app. To download your version free of charge, simply search ‘fc&a’ on Google play or the App Store.