Britain’s leading environmental thinker presents his most audacious idea yet, in this 5-minute short film from director Franny Armstrong
(THE AGE OF STUPID, McLIBEL) and the animation team at Brewery VFX (www.brewery-vfx.com). Franny Armstrong and George Monbiot launched this film at a special 5×15 hour-long debate.
Watch here: • George Monbiot on…
With 45% of global greenhouse gas emissions coming from how we make and use things, design has huge potential to influence our transition to a circular economy.
In this episode of the Circular Economy Show Podcast, we explore why design is important, what ‘circular-ish’ means, and hear about the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s six design leverage points.
In a conversation taken from a recent episode of the Circular Economy Show, hosts Seb and Lou talk to the Foundation’s Design Lead, Joe Iles, about how these leverage points can support designers in their journey towards circularity.
“We can do it. We must do it.” 💬 Sir David Attenborough. This is life on thin ice.
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Frozen Planet II (2022) This six-part series – narrated by Sir David Attenborough – explores the wildlife found in the world’s coldest regions: the Arctic and Antarctic, high mountains, frozen deserts, snowbound forests, and ice-cold oceans. From polar bears to penguins, and from snow monkeys to Siberian tigers, each species must overcome a unique set of challenges to endure its extreme environment. Welcome to BBC EARTH! The world is an amazing place full of stories, beauty and natural wonder. Here you’ll find 50 years worth of entertaining and thought-provoking natural history content. Dramatic, rare, and exclusive, nature doesn’t get more exciting than this. This is a commercial page from BBC Studios. Service information and feedback: http://bbcworldwide.com/vod-feedback-...
Surface Design Show (7-9 February 2023) returns to London’s Business Design Centre, showcasing an exciting and inspirational array of new material trends, plus the latest innovations within the industry.
The theme for the 2023 Show is ‘Shaping Communities’; with an ambition to improve the surroundings for all, through collaboration and meaningful design solutions.
Located right in the centre of the Show, Surface Spotlight Live (SSL) features ground-breaking materials for visitors to touch and feel, giving a truly ‘hands-on’ experience for architects and designers to enjoy and learn from.
Curated by trend expert Sally Angharad and sponsored by CDUK, SSL will present a selection of surfaces, finishes and materials that celebrate the power of creative thinking, demonstrating how ethical innovation is providing positive design solutions.
Sally explains:
“This year’s selection of materials celebrates finding a common ground between the latest innovations and ideas that have a positive impact on people and places. New conversations are showing how human experience and a community’s identity are central to design development”.
Exhibitors from across Surface Design Show have been selected in the following categories at SSL: Common Ground, Let’s Talk Tactility and Collective Thinking.
Common Ground – Exploring processes and applications that balance aesthetics with sustainability so we can live in harmony with our environment
Cemher (stand 301) deliver superior performance and appearance without exception. They offer a wide range of microcements to suit different uses. Microcement is a seamless surface finish that offers a unique alternative to tiles. It is applied continuously by hand-trowel, so there’s no need for joins or grout lines. The cement-based finish is incredibly strong, durable and 100% waterproof. It can be applied to a wide range of substrates creating floors, walls, bathrooms, wet rooms and worktops with a finished depth of 3-4mm.
Rough Old Glass (stand 260) handle countless pieces of antique mirror glass, which portray the unique qualities of old mirror glass. Perfect for the use of decorative wall panels, their classic antiqued mirror finishes can also be toughened for use as a kitchen splash back or a tabletop. From the lightest Foxed finish to heavily degraded Really Rough finish, all their antiqued mirror glass is cut to the client’s specifications and hand- silvered, resulting in unique designs and patination. Rough Old Glass’s products are suitable for both commercial and residential interiors.
Let’s Talk Tactility – Nature inspired pattern and texture creates emotional connections through our sense of touch, enhanced by the interaction of light.
Ketley Brick (Stand 242) link inside and outside spaces seamlessly with their clay quarry tiles. They appear to be integral to the building, like they have always been there and with a range of natural clay colours and sizes available, there is great scope for different designs and laying patterns. With Ketley’s range of Staffordshire brick products, specifiers can combine traditional construction methods with modern systems to gain efficiency, creating exciting textured facades, using solid and special shaped bricks and using modern lightweight construction methods with extruded brick slips where appropriate.
Designer Walls (stand 462) is dedicated to offering interior decorative wall panels with surface texture beyond imagination. They offer innovative wall panel solutions from exclusive European designers and manufacturers which use the finest materials known. Using natural products with modern twists to suit today’s designs and architectural requirements with a healthy appetite for recycled products. The Faux Stone & Slate range uses a system of panels that fix to the wall, giving the effect of exposed stone walls. A natural warm timeless look which works well in a home or hospitality setting.
Collective Thinking – A conceptual approach sees post-consumer waste stay out of landfill, with materials combined onto new colourful offerings
COAT Paints (stand 261) are the first and only paint company to receive the prestigious B Corp Certification, supporting their anti-greenwashing ‘speak in facts’ ethos in the market. They make their paints using high-calibre raw materials, meaning that they use quality pigments, lots of good resin and high-grade titanium dioxide. Coat’s Luxury Eco Paint hides imperfections and covers them effortlessly. The paints are water-based, low VOC, deeply coloured and durable too.
Smile Plastics (stand 368) is the UK’s leading material design studio producing 100% recycled and recyclable decorative panels for retail, interior, furniture, and product design. The reimagined materials have gained a substantial following in the design industry, building an enviable variety of clients from award-winning gastro-start-ups to luxury brands including Christian Dior.
Spared® is a start-up by design agency Volume Creative (stand NT30), born from a desire to support brands in re-using their own waste in their environments by turning waste into beautiful objects, furniture, art and surfaces, spared from landfill.
The world’s first live documentary, RIVERCIDE set out to discover who is polluting Britain’s rivers and why nobody is stopping them. Presented by journalist George Monbiot, directed by The Age of Stupid’s Franny Armstrong and with live performances by Benjamin Zephaniah and Charlotte Church, RIVERCIDE is both gutsy investigative journalism and ground-breaking filmmaking.
More about the film and the campaign to save our rivers: www.rivercide.tv Latest updates on Twitter: @rivercide_live, @georgemonbiot, @frannyarmstrong, @nicolacutcher More from Spanner Films: www.spannerfilms.net
Edited version is now available at https://youtu.be/kSPtVkJ_Uxs. 56 mins. Faster, funnier, more ferocious and with the unabridged George-crashing-into-a-bush-in-his-kayak section
Anyone is free to screen this film whenever, wherever. Download a high res screening version here: https://vimeo.com/636075808
Kakilang to tour architectural pop-up structure built from low carbon materials made by designers Usman Haque, Ling Tan and structural engineers Atelier One
Designers Usman Haque and Ling Tan have worked with structural engineers Atelier One to create a pop-up structure built from low carbon materials and processes as part of touring environmental initiative Low Carbon Chinatown to raise awareness about the data science of climate change, Chinese heritage, and food culture.
Launched in the heart of London’s Chinatown as part of London Design Festival, the pop-up prototype showcased the designers’ approach to creating and fabricating sustainable touring works and, over three days, hosted a series of sit-down tastings of low carbon Chinese dishes to encourage the public to consider the impact of their own cooking on the climate.
Designed to be easily assembled and disassembled, and transported by a small electric van, the structure comprises three key components: a preparation unit, a long banquet table, and a pleated canopy which have been thoughtfully made from materials that are sustainable, low-carbon and easily recyclable in existing facilities once touring ends.
UK grown and harvested Borinda Bamboo from Ness Botanic Gardens in Liverpool was used for the structural members. Borinda bamboo is a hardy plant that thrives in different climates. When harvested, it is a strong, versatile, and sustainable material that also has a powerful capacity for capturing carbon.
The pop-up’s surfaces, counters and cladding were fabricated using EnviroHoard™ a recyclable alternative to typical construction hoarding panels developed by UK-based Panthera Group. In contrast to normal plywood hoarding, the panels are typically reused up to three times on different sites over several years, and then recycled and processed again to be used as new hoarding panels.
The canopy is constructed from pleated Tyvek. While not low-carbon in and of itself, Tyvek is a lightweight, waterproof, and paper-like substance that can be easily repurposed and recycled. Made with 100% HDPE, it is often used in banners and disposable protective wear and can be mechanically recycled into products such as underground cable protection piping, automotive parts, packaging cores and trays.
Low Carbon Chinatown is a touring environmental initiative produced by Kakilang combining community participation, art and design, data science, digital tech and Chinese food culture to help people make sense of issues surrounding climate change through learning and adopting low carbon (footprint) processes in their everyday lifestyle. The meals served at the London pop-up were developed by East & South East Asian communities in London in collaboration with a data scientist and acclaimed Asian chefs and food writers.
SolarBotanic™ Trees announces the arrival of its game-changing ‘solar tree’ designed to offer aesthetically pleasing and sustainable energy, ideally suited to large-scale commercial environments such as flagship office sites and sports stadia.
The SolarBotanic™ Tree is unique to the market and the result of five years of planning research and design, and features exciting new Photovoltaic (“PV”) 3D leaf-shaped nano-technology to harness solar energy for charging and energy storage. It has been developed in collaboration with Co-Innovate – a business support programme which supports SMEs in London by using academic and innovation resources at Brunel University London, the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) in Coventry and the AMRC’s Design and Prototyping Group who will be conducting the prototype testing.
This first-generation SolarBotanic Tree will eventually spawn a family of products, primarily aimed at the rapid Electric Vehicle charging market for homes, businesses and commercial car parks, where solar power can be captured and stored for charging points. It will also encompass a sophisticated AI-driven energy storage and power management system (PMS), where trees can be linked and form part of a local grid, or feed into the main grid, essential to optimise an increasingly electrified future.
The first SolarBotanic Trees will become available in early 2023
Carolyn Porco is a planetary explorer & scientist known for her work on the Voyager mission during the 1980s and as the leader of the imaging team on the now-completed Cassini mission at Saturn. She has co-authored more than 125 scientific papers on a variety of subjects in planetary science and astronomy.
Carolyn played instrumental roles in the taking of three iconic photographs of planet Earth from the outer solar system, including the 1990 Pale Blue Dot image of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, and the Day the Earth Smiled event, in which she invited the people of the world to ‘smile’ during the July 19, 2013 imaging of Earth from the Cassini spacecraft. She has won numerous honors for her contributions to science and the public sphere. In 1999, she was selected by the London Sunday Times as one of 18 scientific leaders of the 21st century. In 2012, she was named one of the 25 most influential people in space by Time magazine.
In 2018, she was the inaugural recipient of National Geographic’s Eliza Scidmore Award for Outstanding Science Media. She was the character consultant on the 1997 film Contact, based on Carl Sagan’s novel, and the science consultant on Paramount Pictures’ 2009 reboot of Star Trek. She is a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley and a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.
Carolyn Porco is a planetary explorer & scientist known for her work on the Voyager mission during the 1980s and as the leader of the imaging team on the now-completed Cassini mission at Saturn. She has co-authored more than 125 scientific papers on a variety of subjects in planetary science and astronomy. Carolyn played instrumental roles in the taking of three iconic photographs of planet Earth from the outer solar system, including the 1990 Pale Blue Dot image of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, and the Day the Earth Smiled event, in which she invited the people of the world to ‘smile’ during the July 19, 2013 imaging of Earth from the Cassini spacecraft. She has won numerous honors for her contributions to science and the public sphere.
In 1999, she was selected by the London Sunday Times as one of 18 scientific leaders of the 21st century. In 2012, she was named one of the 25 most influential people in space by Time magazine. In 2018, she was the inaugural recipient of National Geographic’s Eliza Scidmore Award for Outstanding Science Media. She was the character consultant on the 1997 film Contact, based on Carl Sagan’s novel, and the science consultant on Paramount Pictures’ 2009 reboot of Star Trek. She is a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley and a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
WilkinsonEyre has radically transformed London South Bank University’s (LSBU) London Road building, as part of a wider regeneration of St George’s Quarter, to create an open and inviting centrepiece for its main Southwark campus. Conceived as an inclusive hub for the University, the extensive refurbishment and redesign brings together a library, lecture theatres, fitness facilities, teaching rooms, informal learning spaces, and catering amenities to support students and staff, as well providing services for the local community.
Located north of Elephant and Castle, the existing 1970s concrete-framed building was/is the largest academic building on LSBU’s main campus, providing approximately 20% of the University’s total teaching and learning space. An initial feasibility study undertaken by the practice in 2018 identified the negative impact of the blank external façades, warren-like interiors, and poor accessibility provisions were having upon the building’s users.
The university identified the need to allow the building to work in a communal, cooperative, and collaborative way while retaining the key large volumes of the building on the constricted site. Through adaptive re-use, WilkinsonEyre has resolved these issues, opening up the 20,466m2 space to improve and enhance user experience while future-proofing the building for years to come. The building has achieved BREEAM Very Good Rating.
The major makeover includes the extensive internal reconfiguration of the existing sports and catering facilities and the refurbishment of seven retained lecture theatres, film studios and cinema space. The building also incorporates LSBU’s relocated library, the University archive, small group room spaces, high-tech teaching spaces, computer labs with quiet and silent study areas, as well as staff offices.
The existing structure was largely retained, saving 65% on embodied carbon which is just under half of the 2030 RIBA benchmark targets, and incorporates carbon fibre strengthening in areas where it needed further reinforcement.
To the south-east of the development, an existing car park has been converted into a planted amenity space to invite users into the new building entrance, and provides a safe and accessible through-route between the busy London Road and main teaching building on Keyworth Street.
Nat Keast, Associate of WilkinsonEyre, said: “Our design for the LSBU Hub demonstrates how a building that was having such a negative impact on the campus can be totally transformed to meet 21st century standards, extending its design life significantly while minimising the building’s embodied carbon. We hope that the students and local community will enjoy this revitalised building for years to come.“
The building will open to students at the start of the 2022-23 academic year. More info here
This interactive map is Surfers Against Sewage online version of the Safer Seas & Rivers Service, tracking real-time CSOs (combined sewage overflows) and PRFs (pollution risk forecasts). The app monitors the water quality at over 400 locations around UK rivers and coastlines.
Wouldn’t it be great to have all of this information, plus beach descriptions, live surf and tide conditions, annual water quality classifications, and real-time notifications for your favourite beaches – all at your fingertips?
Great news! – Surfers Against Sewage have redeveloped the Safer Seas & Rivers Service app which offers all of these features and more. Learn more about their pioneering, free service here.
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