Events

Organised by Architects Climate Action Network as part of the AD & ACAN collaboration on the Practice Action series, in partnership with the RIBA, this special event was the series finale - and a chance to connect with a host of incredible organisations. Participants were able to join in-person in either Edinburgh or London or to join online.

Speakers included:

• James York - Architect, PassivHaus designer & Net Zero Carbon building consultant at Collective Architecture
• Laura Baron - Head of Sustainability at Purcell
• Rachael Owens - Head of Sustainability & Buckley Gray Yeoman

And the event showcased positive transformations through a ‘World Cafe,’ with tables and online sessions hosted by diverse organisations and groups around a theme, provocation or offer of advice. An opportunity for participants to get involved and practise their skills in engaging with topics outside of their everyday. 

You can watch the video on ACAN’s YouTube channel.

This special in-person and live-streamed evening event, focused on the Energy Crisis as a live example of wider climate injustice: one aspect of the planetary emergency resulting from the failing systems that govern our built environment and economies.

We held this event as world leaders gathered for the COP27 global talks, and as households, businesses, communities and professions seek to navigate the ongoing energy crisis.

Our excellent panel of guest speakers shares a lively discussion on how our systems are failing to address the crisis, and how our profession can help bring to the forefront solutions and practices to advance justice in the energy crisis and support a just transition:

• Daze Aghaji - a Youth Climate Justice Activist who centres on Regenerative Cultures, Intersectionality, Radical Social Justice and Youth Political Engagement in her work. Daze is a Creative Director at Earthrise Studio, a creative agency dedicated to communicating the climate crisis and an Artist in Residence at Phytology, the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve.
• Sara Edmonds - a retrofit advocate and campaigner, director at Studio seARCH, coordinator at Architects Climate Action Network, co-founder of Home Energy Action Lab and co-host of the Zero Ambitions Podcast.
• Rosie Murphy - ACAN's Diversity & Solidarity Coordinator, and Co-Coordinator of their Education Group. She is an Advocate for the Black Females in Architecture network, a mentor for Homegrown Plus, and a recent Part 2 graduate from the Sustainable MArch at The Centre For Alternative Technology. Rosie now works at the social enterprise Matt+Fiona, where young people are asked how their built environment might be improved.
• Michael Pawlyn - an architect, systems thinker and expert in regenerative design and biomimicry. He established Exploration Architecture in 2007 to focus on high-performance buildings and solutions for the circular economy. He is a co-founder of Architects Declare and a member of the AD Steering Group.
  
  We are very grateful to Levitt Bernstein for hosting this event for us at their offices in north London. Please see our Resources (Changing the goals of the system) page for the video.

UK Architects Declare joined the Climate Strike, assembling outside the Building Centre in London and marching to Parliament Square for the Fridays for the Future gathering there. AD signatories join us to demand action on the emergency and demonstrate that we have solutions for the built environment.

FFF Climate Strike meetings also took place in other parts of the UK, including Doncaster, Edinburgh, Leeds, Lincoln, Liverpool & Oxford. We invited signatories who couldn't join one of the gatherings - or co-ordinate one in their area - to consider making time that day for colleagues to discuss actions within their own practice to address the Climate & Biodiversity Emergency.

The Practice Action series of Masterclasses & Conversations was developed jointly by Architects Declare and ACAN in partnership with RIBA. Designed to assist small and medium practices and those within the practice who are looking to effect change, the series built on themes from our Practice Guide to provide architecture professionals with the practical skills and confidence to pursue more sustainable and regenerative practice models.

We brought together experts from across the industry for informative, interactive and fun sessions that ran from May to September 2022. Architects Declare provided the series of 5 Masterclasses below, with ACAN providing a series of 5 Conversations to complement these. 

1. 6th May: Climate Literacy
2. 10th June: Understanding Impact 
3. 8th July: Working with the Client Brief 
4. 5th August: Collaboration and Learning within Practice 
5. 16th September: Closing the Loop

We ended the series in December 2022 with a special event with ACAN, in London, Edinburgh and online. You can watch the ‘Practice Action - Assembly!’ video, with videos from ACAN’s Conversation series complementing our Masterclasses, on ACAN’s YouTube channel.

Please see our Resources (Supporting our signatories) page for further details and the videos and template Miro Boards for the workshops.

Declared a Climate & Biodiversity Emergency? What next? Building on our successful Practice Guide, this special online event provided an expert panel of speakers to share lessons learned and help others on their journey. 

With opportunities for participants to network and discuss where their practice is now and where they want it to be, break-out discussions focused on opportunities to get there and how to overcome barriers to action.

Please see our Resources (Supporting our signatories) page for the video.

An opportunity for practices to learn more about our new Practice Guide, which we launched at the RIBA & UK Architects Declare Built Environment Summit on 29th October 2021, ahead of the start of COP26. We created the guide to help our signatories convert their declaration of climate and biodiversity emergency into meaningful action and build momentum within their practice. Part 1 is a Practice Roadmap that provides 5 simple steps to transform your business. Part 2 is the Project Design Guide focused on the fundamentals of truly sustainable design and demonstrated through exemplars.

This one-hour online event provided an overview of the guide’s purpose and intent and summaries of each of the chapters, followed by a Q&A session. Please see our Resources (Supporting our signatories) page for the video.

In partnership, UK Architects Declare & the RIBA presented this global event on 28 and 29 October, following the publication of our joint Built for the Environment report and ahead of COP26 in Glasgow, which started on 1 November.

Today 38% of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to the built environment. The summit was a call to action, bringing together professionals from across the international built environment sector to address the urgent need to drive changes in behaviour to reduce carbon emissions.

We cannot meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C temperature rise limit above pre-industrial levels without transforming the way we plan, design, build, operate and adapt our built environment.

Over two days, speakers from across the globe led topical discussions, explored and shared innovative practice, and encouraged interdisciplinary thinking to tackle the crisis and provide inspiration to drive significant change in behaviour.

In the lead-up to COP26 the summit demonstrated the importance of cross-industry collaboration to harness political support and embolden governments to work with the sector to decarbonise construction and that the time for change is now.

Held over two consecutive afternoons, this online conference focused on how to translate the bold ideas needed to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis into action.

Day one involved bold ideas, with a series of inspiring talks interspersed with break-out sessions: 

• Roman Krznaric on how to be a good ancestor
• Dr Gabrielle Walker on carbon targets in the build-up to COP26
• Farhana Yamin on the vital connection between construction and climate justice
• Jojo Mehta on the building momentum for a law of ecocide.  

The first afternoon concludes with a presentation on the Architects Declare Strategy for Change, with opportunities to help shape this proposal.

Day two opened with three short talks from companies - Expedition, Interface and British Land - who have all undergone transformative change, sharing some of the successes and challenges in how they have risen to the planetary emergency. These were followed by a series of PechaKucha style presentations about emerging and provocative ideas. 

The second day ended with a plenary session to discuss the inputs that participants fed into the Strategy for Change. 

Please see our Resources (Supporting our signatories) page for the videos.

Since October 2020, we worked with signatories among different professions within the Built Environment Declares family to hold a series of on online regional events in different parts of the UK. Each meeting featured a presentation on BED's aims by a member of the steering group, and a presentation on the theme followed by open discussion. Some of the regions have held further meetings.

• North East & North West - The Client Emergency: Approaches to Engaging with Sustainable Design (13/10/20) 
• Midlands: Easy Wins in Sustainable Design (20/10/20)
• South & South East: Small Things, Big Impact - Learning from Each Other (27/10/20)
• West & South West: Project Evaluation and Low Embodied Carbon (3/11/20)
• Scotland: Embedding Sustainability (10/11/20)
• Yorkshire: Where Do We Start? Simplifying the Message (17/11/20)
• Northern Ireland: Embodied Carbon and Passivhaus (24/11/20)
• London: Achievements and Struggles in Designing for the Climate Emergency (1/12/20)
• North East and North West: Zero Carbon Perspectives... Approaches to Engaging with Sustainable Design (2/12/20). This second regional meeting focused on the work ofy the Zero Carbon Research Institute at the University of Liverpool, the influence our approaches to simplifying our structural approach can have on reducing carbon and the perceived conflicts between adopting net zero design and cost management and how these can be addressed.
• East: The Green Agenda - Unpicking the Barriers to Change (8/12/20)
• Wales: Wales: Working with the Declaration Points (15/12/20)
• South and South East: Designing for Disassembly and Deconstruction (17/12/20). This second regional meeting focused on deconstruction and disassembly in buildings and the circular economy, with practical examples on a range of scales to better understand how to incorporate design for disassembly in projects.
• West and South West: Raising client awareness of the climate emergency (12/1/21). This second regional meeting looked at raising client awareness, with presentations from North Somerset Council on their emergency response and from Stride Treglown.
• North East and North West: Championing Change - Incentives and Influence (9/2/21). This third regional meeting - in collaboration with UrbanistasNW, a female-led network playing an active role in shaping our built environment to be a more equitable, diverse place to live, work and play - looked at how to successfully influence change, from championing local authority placemaking initiatives to raising client project ambitions.
• South and South East: Retrofit (16/2/21). This third regional event focused on Retrofit, one of the most daunting challenges facing the UK construction industry, hearing from clients about their motivations and problems they’ve faced, Mesh Energy consultants on technical aspects of sustainable retrofitting, and companies rolling out retrofit on a larger scale. 
  
• South and South East: Retrofit Biodiversity: More than just bat boxes (27/4/21). At this fourth regional event, Dusty Gedge, President of the European Federation of Green Roof Association shared some of his case studies and learning on the latest innovations in green roofs and green infrastructure; Dr Julia Baker, Biodiversity Technical Specialist at Balfour Beatty spoke about enhancing Biodiversity Net Gain; and Robert Winch, ESG Consultant on Nature Based Solutions at Hoare Lea, covered the climate adaptation benefits of nature-based solutions, including how landscaping can deliver resilience and microclimate benefits.
• Scotland: The built environment's response to the Climate Emergency (6/5/21). This second regional event heard from Adam Armour-Florence, Sustainability Officer from West Dunbartonshire Council, on recent Scottish climate legislation, how that has changed West Dunbartonshire's approach and steered their Climate Change Plan. Basil Demeroutis, Managing partner from FORE Partnership, the developer of Glasgow's Cadworks Office building talked about FORE's approach to the climate emergency and their work. Graeme Hannah, Head of Sustainability at Robertson Construction talked about the decarbonisation work they are undertaking and gave the constructor's perspective, and Peter Fisher from Bennett's Associates talked about their company's science-based targets.
• London: Practical Hacks: Net Zero Carbon Basics and Embodied Carbon (23/6/21). This second regional event covered two topics with presentations, focused workshops in smaller groups and a follow-up Q&A to give the audience clear take-away understandings and hacks to use in their own projects. The event introduced the concept of whole-life carbon, tracking carbon reduction targets through project design, construction and operational phases, integrating Net Zero into the design team's scope, and typical small to medium-scale UK construction methods, focusing on practical solutions and hacks to help designers to reduce the carbon footprint in their designs. With speakers: Peter Swallow (Grimshaw Architects), Brigitte Clements (LOKI Architecture & Development) & Rick Roelofs (Momentum Engineering).
• South and South East: Offsite and Modern Methods of Construction (6/7/21). With offsite construction gaining considerable momentum in recent years - driven by technological advancements and a need for efficiency as well as being backed by various government initiatives - and set to revolutionise the construction industry, this fifth regional event explored the role of offsite technologies in reducing operational and embodied carbon in buildings, highlighting the opportunities, benefits and pitfalls in various approaches. With speakers: Paul Inch (Better Delivery) & Ian Pritchett (Greencore Construction).

The built environment is a major contributor to climate and ecological breakdown - accounting for around 40% of emissions and 25% of waste. We know this needs to change, and that we all need to work together towards a net zero and regenerative built environment - even more so in a time of recovery.

This joint event with Business Declares asked how can the construction industry be part of the solution, not the problem? And what do we need to deliver net zero and regenerative places in a socially responsible way? An opportunity for key stakeholders in the development of the built environment to come together and share ideas.