Other sessions include a tour of the new Mayfield Park, Manchester’s first city park in 150 years, which surfaces a buried river, hosted by Civic Engineer’s Stephen O’Malley and Studio Egret West’s Duncan Paybody.

 

There’s a session on district heating, with Adriana Rodriguez, Managing Director at district heating specialists Vattenfall Heat UK demonstrating their approach while Emma Fletcher, Managing Director at Evera Homes and Chair of the Swaffham Prior Community Land Trust, is sharing a case study about the first village-wide retrofit district heating system in the country. 

 

Talks on retrofit include Martin Prince-Parr on making a compelling case for retrofit, and Emily Braham, Head of Strategy and Ops for Energiesprong UK will demonstrate how they tackle transforming the energy efficiency of social housing.

 

The broad programme also features Dr Sophie Taysom telling it straight about Environmental, Social and Governance metrics, and why greenwashing is a false economy when it comes to ESG investment.

 

The programme also includes an early reveal of the first data from a biodiversity study undertaken by Elaine Cresswell, and hear from Kevin Barton about some of their groundbreaking resilient landscapes.

 

Festival of Place: Climate Resilience tickets are on sale via Eventbrite, however member organisations of The Developer get free passes for all staff. The two-day event is streamed live on Airmeet, however all sessions are recorded and available to view on demand following the live event.

 

agenda 

All sessions include an audience Q&A and the chance to take an active part in your learning. The event is taking place online 28-29 November, from 11am to 3pm, on Airmeet, a digital platform that enables networking by displaying contact information, with in-event chat, and networking tables.

 

28 November

11am - How should we retrofit housing?
How do we retrofit housing appropriately, and in context, for unpredictable weather and resource conditions? How do we know whether what we are doing actually works? Professor Fionn Stevenson has authored over 120 scientific publications, obtained over £8m in research funding and has a global reputation for developing housing performance evaluation methods and sustainable design guidance.

12pm - Resilient landscapes
How do we make our developments work harder? Kevin Barton, Director at Robert Bray Associates shares research and case studies from urban resilience work. Stephen O’Malley, Founder of Civic Engineers takes us on a tour of the newly completed Mayfield Park in Manchester, considering social resilience found in public spaces that bring us together

 

1pm - Water: Too much
What is the national strategic approach to managing flood risk and what does good look like when it comes to flood resilience design for homes and masterplans? Julie Foley, Director of Flood Risk Strategy and National Adaptation at the Environment Agency is responsible for enabling climate resilient places, leading the development and delivery of the risk management strategy for flooding and coastal erosion. Ed Barsley, environmental design expert and author of Retrofitting for Flood Resilience will explain what happens when a property is flooded, issues of safe egress and access and the low-carbon ways we can build and retrofit back better after flooding.

 

2pm - Tellin’ stories
A lot of the work in climate resilience is around data and technologically driven responses to adaptation and mitigation, but as a species we have an ancient history of storytelling. Dr Gemma Jerome, Director of Building with Nature, will be leading a conversation about the role of narratives in tackling climate change, reflecting on the stories we tell ourselves, our children, families and friends, as well as peers in respective professions. We’ll ask what is missing in our mission to build a coalition for change. 

 

5pm - Keynote: Julie Bargmann
Hailed as the Queen of Slag for her toxic site remediation, Julie Bargmann is internationally recognised as an innovative designer in building regenerative landscapes and with interdisciplinary design education. In both academic explorations as well explorations at her design practice, Bargmann’s on-going research continues to excavate the creative potential of degraded landscapes. Her graduate design studios and courses focused on the design potential for productive futures of fallow cities. Bargmann taught critical site-seeing as a means to reveal multiple site histories, giving legible form to complex processes, offering renewed relationships for communities in tired and contaminated surroundings. From closed quarries to abandoned coal mines, fallow factories and urban railyards, Bargmann joins teams of architects, artists, engineers, historians and scientists to imagine the next evolution of these working landscapes.

29 November 

11am - Energy & heat networks
Taking a district approach to change. Learning from experience, case studies will be shared by Adriana Rodriguez, Managing Director at district heating specialists Vattenfall Heat UK and Emma Fletcher, Managing Director at Evera Homes and Chair of the Swaffham Prior Community Land Trust, which has just completed the first village-wide retrofit district heating system in the country. 

12pm - Selling the dream of retrofit
What stories can we tell that will inspire and empower communities to retrofit their places? Martin Prince-Parrott, Development and Architecture Director of SUB\URBAN WORKSHOP will support us in making a compelling case, while Emily Braham, Head of Strategy and Ops for Energiesprong UK will share some of their retrofit case studies from the UK transforming the energy efficiency of social housing 

 

1pm - Empowering change
As the climate changes, who are the most affected stakeholders in the neighbourhood? Who are the most important partners to bring in when working towards climate resilience? We’ll be encouraged to think differently about the impacts of planetary dysregulation through empathy and learning with Araceli Camargo and Josh Artus, co-founders of Centric Lab. 

 

2pm - No BS on ESG and the data on biodiversity
If you want to gain ESG investment, yes, you have to do the metrics. No, you can’t lie. Welcome to a grown-up and frank conversation on what is happening with Environmental, Social and Governance measurement and investment in the built environment with Dr Sophie Taysom, Associate of the Good Economy, Director of Keyah Consulting and Trustee for Groundwork London. Plus, landscape architect Elaine Cresswell, Director of reShaped, shares early data and findings on biodiversity from the EU urban greenUP climate change adaption and resilience programme.