Street by Street Retrofit : A Future for Architecture – Mike McEvoy
As Scotland and the wider UK grapple with the challenges of climate change, improving the energy performance of existing homes has become one of the most pressing tasks facing the built environment. Street-by-Street Retrofit argues that retrofit offers a compelling alternative to the limitations of contemporary development, reconnecting architecture with a broader social and environmental purpose.
At the heart of the book is a powerful case for neighbourhood-scale, domestic retrofit. Taking a street-by-street approach, it explores the technical, economic and social factors that have shaped progress, and often hindered it, over the past two decades. Historical analysis is woven together with practical discussion, revealing the complex challenges involved in upgrading existing housing stock and the technological and human-centred solutions needed to address them.
The book also revisits the progressive ambitions that inspired early Modernism, suggesting that these ideals can be reimagined for the urgent task of transforming existing buildings. In doing so, it proposes a politically engaged architecture rooted in social value, environmental responsibility and long-term urban improvement.
Street-by-Street Retrofit will be of interest to architects, planners, policymakers, housing professionals and anyone concerned with the future of towns, cities and domestic buildings. It is a timely and thought-provoking contribution to one of the defining architectural questions of our age.
Mike McEvoy studied at Cambridge prior to registration as an architect, then went on a postgraduate scholarship to Cornell; his PhD is from the Bartlett. He was in practice in the United States and Canada and for a decade with Arup Associates in London. Subsequently, he was Coordinator of Technical Studies at the University of Westminster; on the faculty at Cambridge and a Fellow Commoner of Downing College; and latterly, Professor of Architecture at the University of Brighton, where he led EU IFORE an Anglo/French €6.3million street-by-street retrofit programme (which is the background to this book). Previously, he had completed, and published, the outcomes of several funded research projects into low-energy construction. He has written three other books on architectural technology: Architecture and Construction in Steel, External Components, and Environmental Construction Handbook.
Author: Mike McEvoy
Publisher: Routledge
Format: Paperback
Pages: 186
ISBN: 9781032932262
Publication date: July 2026