Looking Back / Looking Forward – AIA UK and Sustainability 10 Years On

From our Spring Newsletter 2010 (archived under News on our Website), an update on the Chapters Sustainability lecture series organised by Alex Miller, AIA, then ‘Sustainability Lecture Chair’.

The AIA UK Chapter has regularly placed sustainability on its agenda and facilitated continuing education for our members through our events program over the years. We are deeply aware this is an ongoing conversation that is taking on an ever-increasing urgency.  

In recognition of the need to heighten public awareness of the issues, AIA UK updated its Chapter Mission Statement in October 2019 to include an explicit statement on our commitment to climate change.  

The intense discussion on how to implement the Mission Statement prompted a review and update of our past efforts, in particular the 5-part Sustainability Lecture series held in 2010 (at the start of the last decade), moderated by Ana Maria Orrù of SCENE.  It has been an opportune moment to recollect the works, thoughts, and bold visions the distinguished, multidisciplinary speakers shared with us at the time and to explore briefly the trajectory of each speaker’s work in the intervening years so that we might learn even more from their further efforts and latest thinking. 

Our first speaker was Michael Pawlyn of Exploration Architecture, who spoke on the topic of biomimicry in architecture via a variety of his projects, including his work on the Eden Project in January 2010.  Michael then shared some of the same work in a TED Talk  (Technology Entertainment & Design) that November, which has now been viewed over 2 million times!  He has continued to speak publicly keynoting numerous events, and several of his other talks are also available to stream. 

Our second speaker was Ed Gillespie of Futerra, who lectured on communicating climate change in the face of a sometimes sceptical public.  Continuing to engage the public in a positive manner, Ed went on to publish Only Planet: Around the World Without Flying in 2014.  He is interviewed in this 2019 video on Slow Travel and Rebellion.  In the summer and autumn of 2019, he was involved with the installation of Beuys’ Acorns 3 at the Bloomberg Arcade, which is part of Bloomberg Philanthropies aim to inspire climate action in cities around the world.

Beuys’ Acorns 3 photo credit: Kelly Hill

In March 2010, Polly Higgins, a barrister and environmental lawyer, shared her life’s work with us and explained her campaign to protect the Earth by criminalising “ecocide”.  Polly sadly passed in the Spring of 2019 but her work continues. To highlight her legacy, we share this video presentation, the Stop Ecocide website, and the article written by George Monbiot for the Guardian in 2019 on Ecocide.

In April 2010, the trans-disciplinary group FoAM brought several members to present their projects both in Europe and East London.  The group remains actively engaged at the nexus of art, science, and sustainability by stimulating events that encourage engagement with the urban landscape – for example, their collaborators from loop.ph presented work on edible roof gardens.  Enjoy an exploration of their varied work through their website and  Autumn 2019 digest. They have since been involved with installations at the V&A called the Storm Laboratory about turbulent weather data and more recently at the Design Museum.

The final speaker in May 2010 was Dr Susannah Hagan, who spoke with us on “Filling in the Blanks: Environmental design and brown field sites”.  She has since been appointed as a Professor at the University of Westminster and published Ecological Urbanism: The Nature of the City in 2014.  Recently in December 2019, she launched the publication of Public Spaces Pre-War and Now.

We hope the above linkages serve as another way for AIA members to engage with sustainability, discourse and practice, and to inspire new ideas for the start of the new decade.  We also remind you of a more recent series of AIA UK sustainability lectures in 2019 at the Cambridge Super Saturday as we continue to build on our commitment.

http://www.aiauk.org/news/2019/9/29/aia-super-saturday-2019-cambridge-sustainability

Written by: Alex Miller AIA