RIBA Summer 2009 Talks Programme - May and June

The RIBA Trust has announced the programme of lectures in its series International Dialogues: Architecture and Climate Change.

The event has been sponsored by consultant Gleeds.

The series takes as its premise that architecture and the design and use of our built environment is an integral part of the climate change challenge.

It aims to inspire diversity in our thinking about architecture and its relationship to issues of global governance, ecology, the environment, science, engineering, technology, energy production, resource dependency, food production and international development, amongst many others.

One of the highlights will be the RIBA Trust Annual Lecture, to be given by HRH The Prince of Wales on 12 May, as part of the RIBA’s 175th Anniversary celebrations.

Other talks include Michael Pawlyn at the Guardian Hay Festival, Peter Head’s lecture ‘Entering an Ecological Age’ and two Denmark: Designing for Climate Change talks by four Danish architecture practices.

Details for the series are as follows

HRH The Prince of Wales - RIBA Trust Annual Lecture 2009
Tuesday 12 May, RIBA

The RIBA Trust Annual Lecture is given by a non-architect on a subject of direct relevance to the built environment. The contents of this lecture will not be known until delivery, however sustainability is expected to feature. This lecture is by invitation only and takes place as part of the RIBA’s 175th anniversary celebrations.

Denmark: Designing for Climate Change, Talk 1 - 3XN and Tegnestuen Vandkunsten
Tuesday 19 May, 6.30pm, RIBA, Jarvis Hall
(In partnership with the Danish Architecture Centre, the Architects’ Association of Denmark and the Embassy of Denmark)

Kim Herforth Nielsen is the nerve and epicentre of the Danish practice 3XN which has received acclaim for projects such as Ørestad College, Kubus in Berlin and the Het Muziegebouw concert hall in Amsterdam.

To encourage architectural innovation the 3XN Research & Design wing focuses on the use of intelligent materials, new technologies and sustainability.

Tegnestuen Vandkunsten are the recipients of the prestigious 10th Alvar Aalto Medal 2009. For almost forty years, Tegnestuen Vandkunsten have focused on pioneering residential architecture and housing developments, designing for convertability and communality with a strong focus on residential involvement, dense-low rise, and most critically, sustainable development.

Denmark: Designing for Climate Change, Talk 2 - CEBRA and COBE
Tuesday 26 May, 6.30pm, RIBA, Wren Room
(In partnership with the Danish Architecture Centre, the Architects’ Association of Denmark and the Embassy of Denmark)

COBE are a young innovative Danish architectural practice, who are the recent winners of two prestigious design competitions for Nordhaven, a competition to design a new harbour front in Copenhagen and for a new Kulturhus in north-west Copenhagen.

Principle founders, Dan Stubbergaard and Vanessa Carlow, develop sensitive and collaborative design solutions with a rigorous belief in the interdisciplinary co-operation with other professions.

Guardian Hay Festival 2009 - Architecture and Biomimicry, Michael Pawlyn
Wednesday 27 May, 4.00pm, Hay-on-Wye
(Pawlyn is founder member of the UK Green Building Council and a committee member of The Edge, an environmental think-tank)
Visit Hay Festival 2009 for more information and booking

Pawlyn was one of the lead architects behind The Eden Project in Cornwall and founder of Exploration Architecture.

He believes that for every problem we face, from generating energy to manufacturing materials, there are examples from nature to give us inspiration.

Importantly, the solutions are often more profitable than traditional approaches, as well as radically reducing the impact on the environment.

Entering an Ecological Age - Peter Head (Arup director)
Tuesday 2 June, 6.30pm, RIBA, Jarvis Hall

Head explores how the world can begin to make the transition towards an ecological age of civilization.

Through this talk, he will explore how human development is now following a dangerously unsustainable path globally, with waves of investment in low and middle income countries accelerating this problem as they follow an unsustainable model.

In particular, he will focus on urban areas and methods of food production which consume land and non-renewable resources inefficiently and how, in order to do something to turn the situation around, we will have to move towards an ecological age.