SB11 Helsinki World Sustainable Conference

And so the conference ends for another three years. This years SB11 Helsinki conference delivered on it's aim of involving the developing countries along with developed countries in discussing the case studies, evidence based design and new theories for sustainable buildings, communities and cities.

Key note speakers included the expected international expertise of those such as Ray Cole and Ger Maas, but also speakers such as Christophe Lalande from the UN Habitat and Cameron Sinclair, cofounder of Architecture for Humanity.

As usual the Australian contingent was well represented by university academics from the University of Melbourne and University of NSW, engineers, architects and designers, and enjoyed the company of international colleagues, including David Clark of Cundall, Chrisna du Plessis from University of Pretoria, and new found colleagues from Aalto University Finland.

Helsinki put on a city Hall function, free travel and plenty of design and shopping tours for all, even the Moomins.

London Calling

London has been amazing. Met with our wonderful colleagues from Cundall and Alan Fogarty on all things sustainable in the UK and Europe.

There is much regeneration work going on here, particularly the work by Chris Brown at Igloo with projects such as Bermondsey Square.

Followed this with a visit to the Building Research Establishment (BRE) and the team in Watford, thanks Gavin Summerson, to learn about what's coming up in international BREEAM and the ISA.

Then onto an exciting session with the UK Green Building Council at the Building Centre. Anna Surgenor and the team provided a fantastic briefing on industry action locally.

It is interesting to see how far Australia has come in the area of Sustainability initiatives embedded into our commercial market. Productivity studies we have been undertaking over the past five years are still not considered as normal in the UK.

Add to this a briefing by Robyn Leeson, director of NetBalance, and her recent attendance in Europe for GRI and Sustainability reporting initiatives and it has been a fabulous couple of days.

Highlights have included

'Look Mum no Hands' cycling cafe in Clerkenwell near our studio, for great coffee , food and atmosphere not to mention the bike repair shop

and Babylon Restaurant in Kensington. Amazing food and even more amazing is an established 'green roof' rooftop gardens populated by pink flamingos and mallard ducks!

Suzette

From the air.

And then I left. Months of planning my sustainable communities trip and then departure day took me by surprise. Still working up to the time I left, I had not given much time to the flight.

Flying over western China the clouds cleared, providing some amazing vistas of the terrain, waterways and small villages.

Rocky mountain tops covered by very little snow appeared. ...followed by the Plateau of Tibet with very dry ridges, which appear to have been formed by melting snow.

But there was no snow to be seen and very little water in the river system or lakes. ...and then it all turned to sand. Windswept dry regions, with a single road running through.

It was not until we crossed over the last regions of old Russia and into central Europe that there were cultivated and productive lands.

When London finally appeared it was in comparison to the previous landscapes, the great metropolis it has become known for. A metropolis defined by uniformity of housing estates, and a seemingly lack of diversity from the air! How do we feed all these people when the ecosystems we base our lives on are drying up.

Suzette

Theo Jansen's Strandbeest - art in motion

Amazing sculptures which walk the beaches of the northern sea. This is a lifes dedication to climatic responses and art.

View Theo Jansen's 'Strandbeest' -  kinetic sculpture in motion.

Sustainble Communities of Northern Europe

I am planning a brief trip through Northern Europe.  A flying visit set of by the acceptance of my paper on organisational sustainabilityy at the World Sustainable Conference in Helsinki in late October.

I have but 4 weeks till departure to locate the best sustainable communities to visit in London, Paris, Copenhagen (or Kobenhavn), Stockholm and Helsinki; all within 18 days, of which 4 are spent at the conference. 



Rooftop Gardens

 I am getting distracted though, by all manor of interesting sites. Like the sustainable rooftop garden in London central, surrounding the Babylon restaurant.

Organically managed gardens on the 6th floor overlooking central London

Looks like lunch is covered... 

Green Cities 2011, Melbourne

The Green Cities conference, has for me mostly focused on green buildings due to the emphasis on the built form, however this year it evolved. Whilst the last couple of years has seen the focus growing toward city design, this year saw it promoting green communities alongside the development of the green communities rating tool.

Green Cities 2011 is the annual conference run by the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) and the Property Council to promote sustainable built environment best practice for and from industry. There were a number of notable key speakers, representing best practice case studies, research and notions around communities however local speakers were again limited to sponsors and GBCA personnel.

Attendance was, as always, a good representation of the stalwarts and industry experts, and therefore the participation and networking opportunities were plentiful. Notable presentations included London Olympics 2012 by Dan Epstein, ideas on Mumbai by Jeb Brugmann, health and productivity by Esther Sternberg and notions of sustainable communities by Michael Greene.

Green Cities 2011 is all about the community and how we live in it, in the developed cities / world (planned /democratic?) and the unplanned or third world cities/countries, which not surprisingly can also be extremely well planned from the community’s perspective. Ultimately the conference was however about the people within communities, their culture and climatic context, the resources available and the economy past present and future. This was complimented by discussions around the Green Communities Tool development.

My take home bytes were:
_It takes seven years to affect cultural change (really?); and

_Our future focus must be design for communities rather than individuals.

Sustainable Urbansim: A Resilient Future Part Three

Day three brought us back to the local context with a presentation by Rob Adams on the approach to city planning taken by the city of Melbourne. This was followed by tours of the local diverse urban context including: Docklands (Brownfield); Footscray (Central Activity District); Brunswick (Greyfields) and Carlton (People and Place).

I toured the ‘Greyfields’ area of Brunswick where the conversion from clay pits, brick factories and light industrial buildings into medium density housing has been a main feature of the last 10-20 years. In addition the strip shopping in Sydney Road has seen an emergence in new and trendy shopping, followed by the development of residential apartments of 3-10 storeys high on the main tramline as per the approach outlined by the City of Melbourne. However ten storeys directly onto Sydney Road is very intrusive. The highlight was Westwyk ecovillage, a small community around an old school site containing adaptive reuse of the heritage building with new townhouses. A hidden gem.

I found the conference imbued a mixed emotive response from hope to depression, excitement to dismay. There is much to be done by not only  professionals who understand our communities potential to evolve and improve, but by all of the community.

I am left with the quotation used by Chris Brown in the TEDTalk, attributed to Edmund Burke 1729-1797.

‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing’...

Our thoughts are with you Japan

We live in such a global community, that it is difficult not to be directly affected by the environmental  and human catastrophes occurring in Japan over the last week.
Whilst it is unfolding and in the future our thoughts are with the people in Japan and also those who have been caught out of the country and still deeply affected with loved ones missing and homes and regions devasted.

For participants wishing to support relief and humanitarian efforts, the UN Global Compact and the UN Global Compact Network Japan recommend making a financial contribution to the Japan Platform – an established emergency humanitarian aid organization comprised of Japanese NGOs, businesses and Government entities which was created to support refugees and disasters worldwide.

Sustainable Urbansim: A Resilient Future Part Two

The following morning had us reviewing research on city approaches commencing with Peter Doherty, Jane-Francis Kelly, and Peter Newton (Peter Newton also presented on behalf of Peter Newman). Then without much ado Gilbert had us on our feet and clumsily bumping into each other in a game of networking. The workshops followed with the participants forming four workshop groups focussing on the how to create resilient cities based on pathways for economics led by John Wiseman; cultural health and wellbeing led by Gilbert Rochecouste; green infrastructure led by Allen Kearns; and built infrastructure and design led by Janis Birkeland.

I participated in the built environment and design workshop looking at the pathways required to evolve our communities into entities delivering positive resource and other benefits as opposed to negative drain on resources from the rural sector. There was much debate which came back to political will and community belief in the change; however the overwhelming theme was the need to clearly express the pathway and benefits of this to the general community to bring the community along. As with all change the community must be engaged and participate in the journey.

The outcomes of the workshop were summated by Dorte Ekelund of the Major Cities Unit, Infrastructure Australia. Sustainable Urbanisation: a resilient future is organising two publication outputs (i) special issue of journal and (ii) edited book. Details can be found on the Sustainable Urbanisation website

Sustainable Urbansim: A Resilient Future Part One

The Sustainable Urbanism Conference held in Melbourne last month was an ambitious bringing together of both international and Australian experts in presentation and workshop formats, including a TEDxCarlton for YouTube. The outcomes from the conference plenary sessions and workshops will form the basis of a new publication edited by Dr Leonie Pearson, Prof Peter Newton and Prof Peter Roberts, titled Sustainable Urbanism: A Resilient Future.

The Conference purpose was to bring together multidisciplinary researchers and practitioners to advance the theory and implementation of resilient sustainable urban development.

The conference kicked off with an open public TEDxCarlton held at Zinc Federation Square in Melbourne. The line up of speakers included Gil Penalosa 8-80 Cities Canada, Cathy Wilkinson Stockholm Resilience Centre Sweden, Chris Brown Igloo Regeneration UK, Peter Roberts Homes and Communities Agency UK, Gilbert Rochecouste Village Well Australia, Pru Sanderson VicUrban Australia and Sein-Way Tan Green World City Australia.

The various case studies, research and ideas were broad however the common theme of designing for local community, community interaction and benefits was expressed in all presentations. Personally my favourites were Chris Brown talking about retrofitting existing buildings for communities and Cathy Wilkinson of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie

David Suzuki's long awaited movie is now at independant cinemas in Australia. David was in Melbourne recently to open the moonlight cinemas showing of the movie.

I missed it but has any one seen this  and if so what did you think?

Legacy from David Suzuki

David Suzuki is an enigmatic person, with an amazing understanding of our ecology and our very existence. I heard him speak last night on his legacy and our planetary existence and was both saddened by the plight we have created for our world and amazed at the spark of hope he has the ability to light in us all.
His description of how the breath he expels contains many billion, billion of molecules which are then with time breathed in by every other creature and plant around the world, demonstrated how we are truly one with the world around us whether we identify with that or not.
If you have not been lucky enough to hear him speak on his recent tours, look out for his feature movie 'Forces of Nature' recently released in Canada.

"We invent our future every day. Choose wisely" David Suzuki

the start of it all

design and sustainability are integral... intrinsically linked, least that's what I believe. The challenge with this is that beauty is subjective and sustainability is usually a sliding scale away from consumerism and wasted resources.

Where does that leave the environment and who really cares in a world that seems to care little for the future and everything for the now?

Human nature tends to lean towards speed, comfort and pleasure when we desire something. Yet when we don't think things through we will often settle for proximity, speed and ease.

So how far do we need to move away from speed, consumerism, excessive resource use and toxicity, before we arrive at sustainability?
Is this responsive design or responsible design, and does it have to be ugly or can it be beautful?
Tell me please.