The Toolshop

The Toolshop is an exhibition-style evening reception of showcases, short demonstrations, presentations and promotional stands. At the Toolshop delegates:

• experience the big view of the urban design market place
• pick up new knowledge and skills
• get to know new products and toolkits
• enjoy an opportunity to network with leading organisations in the sector.

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Here are the exhibitors from 2008
 

Atkins

Atkins is a major force in urban design, delivering sustainable solutions for all facets of the built environment throughout the world.

From major international, national and metropolitan schemes and strategies, to neighbourhood renewal and environmental improvement in small towns, we have an established reputation as innovators in urban development and regeneration.
 

Building for life

Building for Life is the national standard for well-designed homes and neighbourhoods. Initially conceived as a post-construction awards scheme, Building for Life is now used throughout the development process, from design inception to planning application assessments to post-occupancy quality audits.

This session introduced the 20 criteria that form the Building for Life standard and demonstrated some of the ways the tool is being used. Delegates tested spatial skills with a virtual site tour and tried their hands at designing a Building for Life gold standard development with an interactive model.

Delegates also had the chance to look through our guidance on the types of evidence that can be used to show how a scheme addresses the 20 BfL criteria, and see how a Building for Life assessment is undertaken at the pre-planning stage.

CityCAD

is a new city modelling technology that allows true, integrated, holistic analysis of your urban masterplans in the early design stages. It is a parametric tool, meaning that if you change the design, all information such as floor areas, costs, densities and numbers of units are all updated automatically and instantaneously.

Visitors to the stand were helped in using CityCAD to create an integrated city model of masterplans.

Please see www.holisticcity.co.uk/udss for more details.

Northern Architecture

Northern Architecture presented a series of three-minute films of seven award winning design schemes in the North East and Cumbria. These films were commissioned from an independent film maker to articulate the value of design quality to a non-specialist audience through film of the projects and interviews with the users of the buildings and places.

Visitors to the stand heard how to use various different media to engage various groups of mainly non-professional people in discussions about design quality.
  

Spaceshaper

Spaceshaper is a CABE Space toolkit to measure the quality of a public space.
 

The value handbook

The Value Handbook is a practical guide that shows how public sector organisations can get the most from the buildings and spaces in their area. It brings together essential evidence about the benefits of good design, and demonstrates how understanding the different types of value created by the built environment is the key to realising its full potential. 

CABE also has an ongoing research programme, developing evidence of the value created by good design.  The most recent example is Paved with Gold, which contains groundbreaking findings about how much good streets are really worth.

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And here are the Toolshop workshops that took place
 

The Building futures game

The Building futures game is a participation tool for creating and exploring different possible futures for a local area.

It is a form of scenario planning, helping groups ‘play out’ a range of possible futures with participants – a mix of policy-makers, service-providers and ‘community members’ – drawing out a set of concerns and aspirations and considering the impacts and implications of their choices.

At the Urban Design Summer School, participants in the workshop played a snappy, condensed version of the game. They were encouraged to turn their existing skills to creating an exciting and creative plan for the future of the area's built environment.

Outcomes for participants included knowledge of scenario planning as a tool for community engagement, and experience in using the Building Futures Game.
 

Capacity Check

Urban Design Skills introduced the Capacitycheck tool for appraising urban design skills. This was a great sneak preview for a useful tool which officially launched in July 2008.
 

Designing by example - have you ever thought of using a tissue?

Forget high tech IT design programmes and get back to cutting and sticking.

Delegates tried a hands-on technique that allows you to quickly test the capacity of a development site, judge design quality and development feasibility. No drawing or design experience required.

Delegates examined a local development site to determine the design opportunities - routes, edges, views, etc. Then given a 'tissue' of a of a Building for Life casestudy, try your hand at creating designs for the site, using scissors, sticky tape or glue! This technique allows you to look at urban design principles and development quality.

The next steps were to verify the development feasibility of the designed schemes. This generated great debate, hasty re-cutting and an awareness of the relationship between design, quality and profitability. The merits or otherwise of the award-winning schemes also became very clear.

A competition tested recognition of ten good urban design schemes or classic urban places drawn from around the UK.
 

Engaged or pretty vacant? Meaningful community engagement in the regeneration process

With community involvement a key factor in regeneration, how do we make the engagement process as effective and transparent as possible? What are the key stages and key skills that we need to bear in mind when we prepare and practise community consultation?

 

Key principles of sustainable urban design

Sustainable development has suffered from an image problem. There can be few within the professions involved in the built environment for whom sustainability is a new idea. Yet, for an issue this ubiquitous it remains poorly understood, and the source of much debate and disagreement. This session very briefly looked at the history of ideas from which sustainability has evolved and outlines key considerations in creating sustainable development.
 

Layout valuation tools

The Space Syntax team presented their GIS-based computer toolkit that uses Ordnance Suvey data to calculate urban layout value indicators in four areas:

• value of personal security
• value of property security
• value of urban centres
• value of residential property

 

Manual for streets

A fundamental shift is taking place in the way we think about and design our streets. Recent government guidance, Manual for streets puts people first, identifying streets as major elements of placemaking and emphasises their role in creating successful neighbourhoods. The workshop outlined the broad principles of Manual for Streets – what’s new and what’s different – and was followed by a practical design workshop that explored negotiation at the scale of the street.

 

Sharing spaces: what makes the difference?

This session showed the possibility of integrated engineering and streetscape design within the context of current practice and legislation. Delegates tested ideas and engaged with the practical aspects of the deliverability of innovative projects.
 

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And finally... 

...there was even an exhibition of Steve Mayes recent commission to photograph the architecture of the North East.