Ecobuild has become established as the worlds largest event devoted to sustainable design and the built environment, with thousands of suppliers featuring innovative products for use within the construction and design industries. Across the three day event there are also a wide variety of seminars and talks on all subjects relating to sustainability within the built environment.
During my time at the convention this year I attended three talks:-What makes a sustainable community: discussing the most important factors of sustainability within communities both culturally and environmentally. The talk featured guest speakers including Peter Head (a director of ARUP, with responsibility for designing the eco-town of Dongtang in China) and David Blunkett (MP). The talk discussed issues of why people live where they do, and what makes people stay in a place. The implications of transport as well as the provision of facilities within local areas. The talk concluded with a discussion about the practicalities of the new eco-town movement.
-Retrofitting SUDS: Hosted by Paul Shaffer of the CIRA. This interesting talk gave an introduction to SUDS (Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems), their uses and applications before looking in detail at a project to retrofit SUDS into an area of Bristol known as 'The Dings' and another example of SUDS being used successfully in a brownfield development in Sheffield.
-Streets for People: A riveting talk hosted by Ben Hamilton Bailey discussing the upcoming tred for 'shared space' streets and the removal of street furniture to better integrate streets into our urban environment. After an in depth introduction to the topic several schemes were presented, firstly the scheme in Ashford presented by Lindsey Whitelaw of Whitelaw Turkington Landscape Architects and concluding with a presentation on the re-designing of Oxford Circus.
Altogether EcoBuild 2010 was a very full interesting and inspiring day.
EcoBuild 2011 will be hosted in March at the Excel Centre.
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