As we become increasingly aware of the need for regenerative design, Jim Gall discusses traditional architectural perspectives of sustainability and the need for architects to re-think design to ensure a more sustainable future.
Southbank Centre is an organisation whose deep cultural output and audience engagement
requires that they are skilled in curating experiences that embrace every dimension of time
from the most ephemeral to the most enduring, within architecture, landscape and events
across their entire site. Steven Smith of urban narrative discusses how low cost temporary interventions were used as part of the festival programme to test ideas before making commitments to expensive permanent alterations.
Traditional schooling models, characterised by cellular classrooms and ‘chalk and talk’, have been prominent since the Industrial era. Although there’s been much discussion around the need to evolve this model to one which is more engaging and relevant for today’s students, from the limited number of schools that have successfully shifted from conventional structures, it is evident how difficult this is to do. Fiona Young and Meredith Ash share the unique story of the Lindfield Learning Village.
The growing global B Corp movement is a testament to societal concern about meeting standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. UK architect Stride Treglown is one of over 4,600 businesses worldwide to have signed up and Pierre Wassenaar chair of Stride Treglown reflects on the initiative the practice is taking.
Sinking House is a message of warning, and hope, to communities across the world. Placed in one of the most iconic locations in Bath, Sinking House appeared semi-submerged and at a tipping point between Pulteney Weir and Pulteney Bridge. The exhibit coincided with the close of Stride Treglown's Climate Action Relay.B Corporations (B Corps) are businesses that are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, community, and environment. In February 2021, Stride Treglown, a large UK architectural practice successfully achieved B Corp® certification.
Continue readingLindfield Learning Village is a progressive new K-12 comprehensive school located at the former Ku-ring-gai College of Advanced Education site in Sydney, Australia. The school has attracted widespread interest for its innovative approach to education and is one of the three schools profiled in the recent documentary New School, which presents the challenges of 21st-century education and explores the importance of design in generating productive responses. Although students are one of the primary users of schools, they rarely have the opportunity to contribute to or provide feedback on the design of their learning environments. This guest blog offers a perspective from a Stage 3 student who recently joined Lindfield Learning Village.
In Part 1, Simon Foxell discussed the need to refocus our approach to projects and our professional duty to discover whether the briefing we deliver is effective and results in the intended outcomes in countering risk. Here, he addresses how we need to respond to the challenges of concurrently managing demographic change and reversing damage to the environment in a joined-up way.
In this two-part guest blog, Simon Foxell discusses the challenges of briefing in the context of risk and uncertainty and the need to address concurrent issues of managing demographic change and reversing environmental damage.
Stories of struggles to make technology work are unending. As long as there are technological developments, whether a book, an overhead projector, video conferencing or buildings equipped with complex automated systems which call for re-humanizing architecture, such stories will continue while the actor playing the role of the technology changes. Picking up on Adrian Leaman‘s earlier blog on the five most important things to think about in architectural briefing, Sam Cassels illustrates the plight of the nervous presenter confronted with an overhead projector.
Our 7th sounding panel session connected participants from across Australia and the USA to explore how tertiary and workplace learning can lead to new ways of practice and how emerging forms of practice can inform design education.
Although participants trajectories toward integrative briefing practices were diverse, characteristic of many formative experiences were opportunities beyond traditional architectural training and practice. Some participants had worked in other design and creative fields, such as set design, curatorship and exhibition design, exposing them to a range of other types of people, professions and practices. Working with mentors such as Mary Featherston, Frank Duffy, Shirley Dugdale, James Calder and John Worthington featured strongly in helping people learn about briefing in practice.
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Managing the Brief For Better Design 