Foreword to "The British Papers" published by RIBA Publishing
The British Papers is a collection of invited essays and opinions from architectural and urban- design leaders, as a snapshot of current thinking and approaches to sustainable city making.
As President of the RIBA, I championed internationalising the institution to create new partnerships around the world, promoting British design expertise to encourage future collaborations.
During the heart of the recession, I led many RIBA, UKTI and British Council trade missions and spoke at more than a hundred venues in
the UK, Europe, Middle East, US, China and Vietnam on
the benefits of sustainable design and how we can work together on solutions that suit each otherâs history, culture and identity in the context of a responsible approach to the worldâs resources.
What promoted this outreach overseas began in 2004, when as chair of Women in Architecture we positively promoted diversity in our profession. We curated the DiverseCity architectsâ exhibition, which travelled to 34 cities around the world including the UK and Europe, the US, the Middle East, China, India and Australia. We invited each host cityâs architects to join the exhibition, showcasing their people and projects.
See link: http://women-in-architecture.com/index.php?id=35
Thus the exhibition became known as the Global Snowball. From that time we experienced the benefits of sharing ideas and exchanging knowledge and appreciated the mutual respect shown for each otherâs cultures.
During these visits it soon became apparent that in many developing countries, the mistakes of the west were being repeated. Soulless, rootless, gas-guzzling buildings were being put up without reference to their cultural context or suitability to local climatic conditions.
The UK is famous for innovation and design skills and the UKTI âGREATâ campaign relays
this message. One of the UK highlights was our 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games. From procurement to legacy, we produced the most sustainable Games to date. We managed to capture the spirit of this achievement in our short film âDesigning for Championsâ. Our campaign also filmed 55 key design voices during the course of the Paralympics.
See link to 4 min video
http://www.architecture.com/Explore/Stories/DesigningforChampions.aspx
As a way of influencing the sustainable-city debate I invited the authors of this collection of essays to share particular viewpoints about the latest design thinking. In this wide-ranging collection, English Heritage promotes regeneration via constructive conservation and the Academy of Urbanism discusses how our history, culture and identity anchor us in place and time. Our top universities â the LSE, Manchester and Birmingham among others are key to shaping our city- design thinking and creative architects and engineers pave the way with ideas and projects. There is research on Urban Agriculture from Brighton University and tree advice from Tree Design and Action Group.
This collection developed out of a collaborative project with my Beijing contacts from ten years ago, who requested a critical analysis of Chinaâs recent direction of development and asked for advice on how we could share sustainable knowledge. The resulting set of 22 essays were published in Chinese by Global Brand Insight in Beijing in 2014 as The China Papers.
With The British Papers we want to mirror that enthusiasm and welcome collaboration.
I believe that the selected experts and professionals send a clear message about the great expertise and sensitivity to context we have here in the UK and the ways in which we can learn together to build better cities to help prepare for a low-carbon future.
A few words about the book;-
"The compact city is the only sustainable way of housing a growing urban population. Â This means creating well-designed neighbourhoods with a live-work mix, and housing affordable to rich and poor, connecting them with walking, cycling and public transport infrastructure, and making public space that is open for all. Â Allowing sprawl not only destroys valuable natural resources, but also robs cities of the vitality, and potential for meeting friends and strangers, that is the bedrock of civilised society. Â It is exciting to see the breadth of architectural and design thinking in this collection of essays. Â I hope it will be widely read, not just by architects and planners, but by the politicians who lead our cities.â
Richard Rogers KBE
"Itâs good to have a collection of 34 essays with viewpoints from many different backgrounds. Sustainable city making is a collective endeavour and requires industry, government and communities to come together and shape a vision of the future. In the Farrell Review of architecture and the built environment, I made the point that more collaborative and proactive planning is needed to create resilient and adaptive communities. There are many lessons to be learned from these papers about quality design and placemaking".
Sir Terry Farrell
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