Posts under ‘International’

Having got thoroughly depressed reading another thread on climate change off the back of an article in the Sunday Times, it was a delight, and an irony as it’s housed on the same site, to listen to comedian John Oliver riff on it on the Bugle podcast from last week:
Just reading up on these (climate [...]

So Copenhagen is nearly upon us. As I’ve been chronicling in the past few weeks there is now a real debate. Those that were either holding back, were wary or were waiting have emerged to question either the science behind climate change or the current, potentially soon to be agreed, responses to it. So some [...]

After what fellow blogger Mel Starrs described yesterday as “a funny old week” involving a range of heated discussions it was refreshing to hear from a man of action. Step forward then Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, who gave a lecture last night at the RSA. Sinclair’s work, which was described by RSA [...]

So got one virtual event out of the way last week. And all things considered it went pretty well. Invest UK was the first of its type: aimed at an audience which we were unsure would embrace what virtual events offer and focused on a topic area which again was new. The event was very [...]

So I’m under pressure this morning. Lots of meetings as ever and a deadline of around 17 minutes to get a post out about Blog Action Day. There’s also a bunch of bloggers across my company that are taking part as well, which is nice (see below). I’m clearly not going to match the level [...]

The past week has seen a bout of navel gazing amongst probably the two crucial professions at the front end of dealing with energy use in buildings, namely architects and services engineers. In the architecture corner David Nixon, originally a founder of influential firm Future Systems, issued a rallying call to the profession to take [...]

Here’s a round-up of random slides and pictures taken during the Web 2.0 event earlier in the month:

On Gulf cities, aka Dubai:
You take the most extreme, edgy forms of Western culture and try to transpose it to an environment that has no preparedness for it. You get this bizarre situations where you have the tallest building, the largest this and the biggest that, which are completely unconnected to the life of those [...]

Part one of two guest posts by architecture student Benjamin Kinch
As part of my architecture course I am currently conducting an investigation in how BREEAM equates to theories of true sustainability.
Initial correspondence with BREEAM assessors, industry, architects, contractors etc. caused the investigation topic to look at issues such as aesthetics, functionality and social issues [...]

I think I have something of an apology to make. Last October I went to Dubai for the Cityscape event, and blogged
rather half heartedly on my concerns about the region. One fellow blogger chided me somewhat after I returned on my rather tepidly critical posts. And she was right. The months since have proven what [...]