MAKE LEWES FESTIVAL 2016

19/09/2016

MAKE LEWES FESTIVAL 2016

A festival of making, architecture and sustainable design

The festival is running between the 24th September and the 2nd October

Our very own Ian McKay will be taking part in The Make Lewes Festival this year. Ian will be chairing The Symposium on Sunday 2nd October 2016. Please see the timetable below for further details.

Making Lewes, a Lewes based community organisation that promotes the exchange of knowledge in the fields of Making, Architecture, Design & Sustainability, is holding its third and most ambitious annual Make Lewes Festival from 24 Sept – 2^nd October at venues across Lewes.

The festival will highlight ideas and developments in the area of sustainable design, bringing together national and international specialists and practitioners for 10 days of lively debate and collaboration.

The festival will be a series of events open to the public, each event focusing on a particular area of innovation in the field. Highlights include:

Making Digital Craft Symposium and Exhibition, exploring how digital technologies are changing craft, making and design and the challenges they pose. The Symposium highlights how new technologies, including robotics, 3D printers and CNC routers are reconstituting our understanding of craft and making. Speakers include Guan Lee on his Clay Robotics work at the Grymsdyke Farm workshop, Jon Minchin from Vallidaura Green Fab Lab, and Isabelle Risner of at Westminster University speaking about the European Research Project Digital DIY. Further speakers to be announced.

New Vernaculars for a New Century Symposium and Exhibition. This afternoon seminar focuses on contemporary vernacular architecture and building in the context. Speakers include Adam Richards from Adam Richards Architects, architect of the Ditchling Arts & Crafts Museum, Ramun Capaul, from award winning Swiss practice, CapaulBlumenthal, designers of Europe’s first rammed earth cinema (tbc) David Smith, Flint Man flint construction specialist on Flint House, RIBA House of the Year winner, Meredith Bowles, Mole Architecture, leading regional East Anglian practice with a particular interest in East Anglian vernacular. Further speakers to be announced.

Collaborative Collisions II – Following the success of MLF’s first Collaborative Collisions last year, this year’s improvisational workshop will draw together a diverse group of makers, crafts people, designers and inventors, to meet a design challenge which integrating plastics, paper, and other found materials from the Turkish Baths. Expect the unexpected.

Kinship III, an exciting workshop to refit the Lewes Turkish Baths co-led by William Hardie of Studio Hardie, Lewes, and Sally Daniels of the University of West of England’s Architecture Department. Up to thirty-five participants will be inspired by geodesic design to create a bespoke festival venue using recycled materials available in the building and around the area. The Turkish Baths will then become the hub venue for a series of events over the festival’s latter half.

Make Local, Connect Global – Lewes Makers Talks. Ewan Clayton, calligrapher and author of The Golden Thread: A History of Writing, and Rachel Ward-Sale of Bookbinders of Lewes.

Collaborative Conversations is a regional crafts symposium organised in partnership with CraftNet and the Crafts Council. Speakers include Annabelle Campbell, Head of Exhibitions & Collections, Crafts Council; Atomik Architecture; textile artist and designer Ptolemy Mann.

Further Exhibitions – Additional exhibitions include MakingGround, part of basket-maker Anne Marie O Sullivan, and ceramicist Elaine Bolt’s collaborative project, Validaura Green Fab Lab, RCA post-graduate design pecha kucha, and a Lewes focused student architectural exhibition by London Southbank University.

Oliver Lowenstein of Making Lewes said, “It’s super-cool to see this year’s Make Lewes Festival develop further its signature focus on crossover, outside the box, themes, linking making to architecture and digital technologies to hand and crafts skills. Once again the festival is highlighting, reflecting, and integrating Lewes into what’s happening across some of the most lively, exciting and thought provoking kinds of making locally, nationally and internationally, while shining a light on the dynamic creative life in Lewes. We extend this mix by welcoming all comers, from specialists and professionals to students and amateurs and all those interested in the themes and subjects.

Make Lewes Festival 2016 – Timetable

Symposia and Seminars

Make Local, Connect Global – Lewes Makers Talks

30th September 19:30-10:00 Venue: Studio Hardie Unit 2

Making Digital Crafts – Symposium

1st October 14:00-17:30 Turkish Baths

New Vernacular for a new century – Symposium

2nd October 13:30-18:30 Turkish Baths

Collaborative Conservations – Symposium

A regional Crafts Council supported symposium organized by CraftNet and co-hosted by MakingLewes.

30^th September 12.00 – 5pm Main Venue: Studio Hardie

Workshops

Collaborative Collisions II – Workshop

24^h – 25^thSeptember, 10 – 5pm Venue – Turkish Baths

Kinship III – Workshop

25^th – 29^h September, 10 – 5pm – Venue – Turkish Baths

With a talk by Danish Geodesic architect, Kristoffer Tejlgaard

25^th September 19.30 – Turkish Baths

Digital DIY – workshop

1 October, (11.00 – 13.00 ) – Venue The Foundry

Exhibitions

New Vernaculars For A New Century – Exhibition

Daily, 24^th – 2^thOctober, 9.30 – 5.30pm – Venue – Turkish Baths

Bookbinders – Exhibition

Daily, 24^th – 2^thOctober, 9.30 – 5.30pm (TBC) – Venue – Library

DBB Interview with Viva Brighton

12/01/2015

/ BBM Architects

First published in Viva Brighton: http://www.vivabrighton.com/jan2015/60-61.pdf

Hastings Media Centre – BBM Sustainable Design

Is Brighton at the forefront of sustainable architecture in the UK?

A lot of people in the business are looking at what’s going on here, for various reasons. Personally, since designing and building the Waste House – the first buildingnin the country to be entirely constructed from waste products – I’ve been inundated with requests to do talks about the project all over the UK. Brighton is the only city with a Green MP and a Green Council, and, crucially, it is the world’s first designated One Planet City with a Sustainability Action Plan designed to reduce the city’s ecological footprint. What’s more, the city has been classified by UNESCO as being a

designated biosphere.

Are you involved in building other ‘waste houses’?

Not exactly. The problem Brighton has is that there’s an enormous need for new housing – to the tune of 30,000 new units – but because of the Downs to the north, the sea to the south, and other developments to the east and west, there’s no room for expansion. A traditional solution would have been demolition of old buildings and rebuilding of others in their place, but that would mean, if we were to establish a carbon neutral city, the demolition of 97.5% of the existing housing stock!

We have been looking at more radical, and more feasible solutions. For example it is more cost effective, and more ecologically friendly to adapt and perhaps extend existing buildings instead of demolishing them, meanwhile making them more ecologically sustainable, in a process known as ‘retrofitting’.

Give me an example…

Just one example was our retrofit of a large Victorian house called The Nook, in Preston Village, having won a £150,000 grant for the purpose from the Technology Strategy Board. This includedmover-cladding with six inches of external wall insulation, and a complete refit of energy saving systems resulting in an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions from the building.

But that didn’t involve any expansion…

We are very inspired by an example of Parisian retrofitting, whereby a 25-storey block of flats was insulated by wrapping a layer of accommodation around it, in effect adding an extra room to every flat and in doing so making the whole building much more energy efficient. In some instances it is also possible to build up as well as outwards. We have considered these sorts of projects in detail with our postgraduate architecture students and we are currently looking closely at suitable sites in Brighton that could deal with these innovative ideas.

It doesn’t sound very ecological to increase housing density!

Believe me, it is the only way forward. The world population is rising so fast, we will need to find very radical solutions very quickly to create accommodation for everybody, especially in an area like the south-east of England. And all this while cutting the ecological impact of the buildings they live in.

Interview by Alex Leith

Duncan Baker-Brown is a director of BBM Sustainable Design, bbm-architects.co.uk, and Senior Lecturer in architecture at Brighton University

Sustainability. A Waste of Space?

05/11/2014

/ BBM Architects

Duncan Baker-Brown takes part in a series of forums discussing the ‘hot topics’ of sustainability with four other leaders in the field.

“Everyone has a point of view about sustainability, but it is the rare few who truly embrace it and only the most enterprising of companies who live it.

Blond Ideas Group is an innovation agency who believe that sustainability can set the agenda rather than just be an item.”

Blond Ideas Group website

FIRST TALK: 13th NOVEMBER 2014

MORE INFO AT: www.sustainabilityawasteofspace.uk