The signs on the site hoardings announce: “This is not an ordinary project. But it needs to be.” That would be a neat summary of what is being delivered behind those same hoardings – a project that hopes to demonstrate to one of the most environmentally polluting industries a way to transition to a sustainable economy and to make retrofitting existing buildings to high standards the norm.

The project itself, which is completely obscured by safety sheeting, is called the Entopia Building: the name is a blend derived from the “En” of Envision, an electric car battery manufacturer which donated £6m towards the cost of the building, and utopia. It will be the new headquarters for the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), part of Cambridge university. As the name suggests, CISL develops leadership solutions for a sustainable economy, so it needed to walk the talk by commissioning a building exemplifying the organisation’s values.

The £12.8m project is a deep green retrofit of a 1930s former telephone exchange in central Cambridge used for offices since the 1990s. The building is being refurbished to the Passivhaus EnerPHit standard, and CISL also want to achieve BREEAM Outstanding and WELL Gold certification too.

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