This year a team of Temple staff attended Open City’s Green Sky Thinking; a week-long London-wide events programme, which focuses on how sustainability can be embedded into the built environment. Unlike like other industry events, the festival consists of informal presentations, as well as on-site project talks, an aspect which is very attractive to Temple. Green Sky Thinking attracts key players from the sustainability industry, including; Crossrail, Bam Ferrovial Kier Joint, Innovate UK, Arup, PRP, Skanska, BuroHappold, plus many more.
A large number of our clients hosted events, so it was also a chance to
reflect on how Temple is also playing a part in creating a more liveable London, as well as to help generate ideas internally on what else we can be doing. Temple hope to
run our own Green Sky Thinking event next year.
Engineering the Future; BuroHappold Engineering
Greg Yiangou – Consultant
“The event showcased 10 different innovative projects that aim to address the challenges created by the rapid urbanisation of London. These projects focused on a wide variety of problems that cities all over the world will be facing, from stress on existing transport networks to health care systems. For me this was the most exciting thing about the talk – they demonstrated how digital technologies and open data have the potential to adapt and solve problems cities are facing across a wide range of sectors”.
The
Opportunities & Challenges of Building Farringdon Crossrail Station; Crossrail, Bam Ferrovial Kier Joint Venture
Toby Wastling – Senior Consultant
“This event was interesting at it gave attendees the opportunity to see the Crossrail Farringdon Station site and appreciate the scale of the development. As part of the Crossrail project spoil is being put to beneficial use by being used for a bird sanctuary at Wallasea island. The event also demonstrated the challenges of the project, including the number of unknowns that continue to provide challenges in London construction – underground structures, archaeology, lack of information on utilities to name but a few!”.
How to
Build a Sustainable Railway? Crossrail
Toby Wastling – Senior Consultant
“Interesting session to understand how sustainability issues learnt from Crossrail can be taken forward into future projects i.e. Crossrail 2, HS2, Thames Tideway Tunnel. The event discussed the idea of cement free concrete, which is currently being developed. Though innovation has been carried out this is limited due to the lack of knowledge about process – will it be able to support the infrastructure for 120 years?”.
Toby Wastling – Senior Consultant
“A real discussion about how architects and engineers can increase sustainability in construction. Part of the solution will be down to the newly qualified professionals who have been educated in sustainability from an early age”.
Overheating;
PRP
Amy Cook – Senior Consultant
"I found PRP’s ‘Overheating’ session the most exciting Green Sky Thinking event. Something that is becoming a more prominent theme in regeneration schemes is the idea of ‘community resilience’; It is one thing to ‘build’ resilience into new infrastructure or development for example by using low carbon materials which can withstand higher temperatures or, altering the aspect of dwellings so that their rooms do not receive prolonged hours of direct sunlight. However, to consider climate change within the context of an existing vulnerable community and how its support network may adapt, is a relatively new concept and are a far more difficult notion to incorporate into design.
The event discussed work which has been carried out to understand patterns of behaviour of local communities – is there infrastructure or a support network in place for vulnerable people? An example given was on ventilation: an elderly resident of a care home may not be able to reach to open a window if they’re too hot – is there a support network to ensure they don’t suffer from overheating?".
Erica Ward – Senior Consultant
“I attended the ‘Healthy Cities, A Wake up Call’ event hosted by LUC. The most interesting thing I learnt was that although there is a lot of buzz in the industry about getting funding for green infrastructure (due to proven health benefits) from health budgets, this may be more difficult to implement practically. Most health funding is for clinical commissioning and there are much more limited budgets within public health, where this type of funding would come from”.
Green Sky Thinking
week
Terry O’Neill – Account Director
"For me the overriding impression I took in attending 8 of the Green Sky Thinking events was the passion and urgency which all of the speakers communicated. They (and we along with them) understand the opportunity now available to us to embed sustainability into the agenda for infrastructure and development. The timing for this should not be underestimated and full advantage should be taken where possible".
