Following Jeremy’s visit to the Mayville Community Centre at the beginning of June where he was shown round the building by Rachel Witherick (b:a), Trevor Mbatha (MCP), Jessie White (MCP) and David Ironside (site manager for the contractor), today Jeremy visited our offices and joined us for the daily office lunch. Jeremy is hugely supportive of the passivhaus refurbishment of the community centre, a building he has been personally using for nearly 30 years in his role as Labour MP for Islington North.

Jeremy told us how he used to set up a desk in the ground floor west lobby and hold his monthly surgery for local resident to come and voice their concerns to him. He thought it was great how the existing building has been reused rather than demolished so that although the colour and internal planning arrangement might have changed, the building is still recognisable and identifiable from both outside and inside the key main hall space which is so important for the local community taking ownership of the building again.

Jeremy’s interest and support for passivhaus buildings and the environment led the conversation at lunch across a wide spectrum of issues and concerns, opening up opportunities for further research work for bere:architects in conjunction with Islington Council, concluding that the Mayville passivhaus project is just the tip of the iceberg for what now needs to happen with the existing building stock within the Borough.