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Video briefings
Find out more about the school, the issues we tackle and even meet some of our team members. We will be adding more videos throughout the year, including short lectures, interviews and topical items, so watch this space.
About the videos
The videos were made by Urbanintell. Urbanintell explores the way that we communicate about urbanism in speech and images, rather than the written word. Theorists and practitioners extemporise about their ideas, their experience and their work, to camera. With these techniques the subject is demystified and made accessible to a wider audience.
Piers Gough on the spirit of the place
The post-1960s trend for detailed site analysis may be a useful antidote to the perils of an international style, but Piers Gough demands more from a response to context than box ticking in a potentially drab, formulaic analytical process. Try reinvigorating and understanding intuitive spontaneity, he says.
Bill Dunster on energy and urban design
The innovative, award-winning architect recorded at his office ZEDfactory, based at BedZED, the solar urban village in south London, geared to create a near carbon neutral lifestyle via Zero Energy Design. Whether you accept or dispute the science of climate change, this is a thought provoking and compelling case for a new aesthetic, a new vernacular derived in part from the physics of carbon accounting.
Rob Cowan on the clarity of communication
Whilst the language of some disciplines may be indecipherable to the lay person, the terminology will tend to be comprehensible to those specialists. By contrast, in urban design, the specialist terminology or images may reflect obscure contrary meanings and intentions. An argument against obfuscation and for clear, straightforward expression and how to achieve it.
Dr Noha Nasser on culture and space
Cities may provide elaborate physical fabric and containment but how do individuals, particularly in diverse, multi-ethnic communities such as Birmingham, assign meanings and value to space? How do people actually use city space and how might this be designed to embrace diversity?
Howard Liddell on a design of 'eco-reticence'
Is it necessary for energy saving buildings to look like eco-developments? Must these green credentials be expressed overtly in the physical form of the structures? No, according to Gaia, who argue for an ‘eco-minimalism’: the integration of sustainable objectives without an overt physical expression.
