Celebrating our 5th Birthday!

We were excited to have over 120 people join us and our hosts HaworthTompkins on 24th July to celebrate UK Architects Declare's first five years.

Around 80 organisations were in the room to celebrate how far we've come together over the past five years, including signatory practices and partners in our programme to move the built environment to address the planetary emergency. The energy, dedication and creative thinking to drive our collaborative action forwards is more prevalent than ever.

Members of our Steering Group shared their insights from AD's inception in 2019 and impetus to bring the sector together around our declaration points for systems change, the successes in producing our Practice Guide and Practice Action Masterclasses, and our more recent achievements with the Regenerative Design Guide, Regenerative Architecture Index and Building Blocks manifesto for transformative built environment policies.

Tom Gibson, one of our new Steering Group members, welcomed us to HaworthTompkins. Michael Pawlyn, AD's co-instigator alongside Steve Tompkins, told everyone how "Five years ago hardly anyone was talking about regenerative design, and now everyone is. That’s something we’ve all created together - the potential for architects to reclaim our agency as shapers of the future, as integrators and systems thinkers.”

Zoe Watson said "I think everyone in this room can be extremely proud of the community we’ve grown together and the collective action we have taken over the past 5 years"

Deepthi Ravi, one of our newest Steering Group members, painted a picture of our future focus: "Let’s embrace and transform the built environment that we all work with for 2030, and do it such that we plan, construct and operate within planetary boundaries.."

Julia Barfield led us in a toast to AD's programme and partners, and Carrie Behar reminded us of all the people and organisations who have made AD a success and whose support is fundamental to our work - and of the opportiunities to support us through a financial donation or to get involved in our work. Over the years, AD has worked closely on publications and events with many partners, including the RIBA and ACAN!, with an array of organisations on our Building Blocks policy work, and most recently with Architecture Today to launch the Regenerative Architecture Index - which will announce its first year's results in September.

Carrie then guided us through a short discussion, asking guests to become gather in the corners of the room designated with AD's key themes, according to where they think we should focus our activity - 'influencing local and national policy', 'supporting signatory practices', 'advocating for industry change', and 'something else' that they wished to propose for us.

Our Plan for Change sets out our approach to supporting signatories and demonstrating where leadership can replace the system that has created the climate and biodiversity emergency with one that builds a better future for us all.

Thank you to everyone at HaworthTompkins for all their help organising this special event, making us welcome at their offices - and making a special cake! - and all who made this such a great evening!