Action for Alternative Futures: Post COP26
Wednesday 13 October 2021, 18:30 -19:30 (Via Zoom)
Meeting ID: 883 7727 4837 Passcode: 544364
Discussion that will explore how we might employ more creative / enabling policies in relation to our response to the Climate/ Environment Crisis in context upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP26).
Robert Bourke, Director at Robert Bourke Architects, founder Act Now Collective
Léan Doody, Associate Director and Cities & Planning Leader for Europe at Arup
Kevin Loftus, Architect / Urbanist /Co-founder at ACT / Ballina Irelands Greenest Town
Scott McAulay, RIBAJ Rising Star 2020, Coordinator, Anthropocene Architecture School
Moderator: Orla Murphy, UCD School of Architecture Planning and Environmental Policy and co-director (with Philip Crowe) of UCD Centre for Irish Towns (CfIT). She is owner of Custom Architecture and is a member of the High Level Round Table of the New European Bauhaus.
Scott McAulay (he/him) is a climate justice activist, architectural designer, and climate literacy educator. Since founding the Anthropocene Architecture School in early 2019 in response to architecture’s lasting inertia on climate action, his work has created opportunities and spaces to respond to the climate emergency through architectural and built environment means for thousands of people internationally - fusing activism, climate literacies, provocation and regenerative design principles. He is a coordinator of the Architects Climate Action Network’s Carbon Literacy Working Group, co-director of Anthropocene Projects C.I.C, a Part 2 architectural assistant at Architype, and sits on the RIAS Sustainability Working Group.
Léan Doody is the Integrated Cities and Planning Leader for Europe at Arup. She has over 20 years of professional experience in the industry which includes advising a variety of clients from city and national governments to private developers, and on a variety of projects involving extensive strategy and policy work on the application of smart technologies and the future of work. Recent project work includes strategy and policy work for Danish and Singaporean governments, the Greater London Authority, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, Dublin City Council, Sydney, Canberra and major masterplanning projects in Denmark, the UK, Singapore and Dubai. She recently led the development of a strategic report for IPUT, Ireland’s leading property company, on the future of work and placemaking post C-19.
Léan speaks often on the future of cities, and has been quoted in international media including the New York Times, Vogue Business, the Financial Times, BBC, the Economist, Domus.
She is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at University College London in the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (UCL STEaPP) and an external examiner at the Royal College of Art in London.
Before joining Arup in 2003, Léan completed a Masters degree in urban policy and design at the London School of Economics. Her primary degree is in Mathematics from Trinity College Dublin.
Outside of Arup, Léan is a Director to the Board of the Sustainable Energy Agency of Ireland (SEAI), a national government agency for promoting sustainable energy practices and policies in Ireland.
Robert Bourke is the director of award-winning, Dublin-based architecture studio, Robert Bourke Architects and is a Design Fellow and the School of Architecture, University College Dublin. He also devotes much of his time to climate-related initiatives through his involvement with Irish Architects Declare and Dublin Friends of the Earth. Increasingly frustrated with the lack of urgency surrounding the climate and biodiversity crisis, he co-founded the Act Now Collective in May 2021, with six volunteers with backgrounds in architecture, graphic design, climate policy, media and healthcare. The Act Now Collective have created an online guide to low carbon living under nine simple categories. A Spanish version of the site will be brought online soon. Last week they helped launch a new climate news podcast called the Climate Alarm Clock, which aims to provide a template for delivering honest and relevant climate news. The Collective’s aim is to harness their individual skillsets, networks and interests and find creative ways to maximise their impact on the climate and biodiversity crisis.
Kevin Loftus is an architect, urbanist and co-founder at ACT, a built environment firm that is setting out to champion best practice in design and the green transition. A native of Ballina and recently returned, Kevin has spent the last decade abroad. He has worked in China at Buro Ole Scheeren and in the Netherlands at MVRDV. He has contributed to design at various scales from skyscrapers and city plans to homes and urban interventions. Recent projects include ‘The Timber Headquarters’, a proposal for the world’s largest timber building, ‘Chengdu Sky Valley’, a proposal for a car-free city in China and ‘The Waldratsamt’, a proposal for a new district administration office in Karlsruhe that re-imagined the relationship between nature and the city. The ‘Ireland’s Greenest Town’ vision for Ballina encompasses many of the principals he feels are critical in the move towards a greener future. In addition to his main work, Kevin is a guest architecture critic at The University of Central Lancashire. He has organized and co-led volunteer design and build projects in both Borneo and Palestine. With a strong passion for all things green and social, Kevin pushes the core ideas of sustainable development in his work.
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