Today we kicked off our 6th annual Green Week, a week of events, talks, meals and presentations organised by staff across all of our offices to highlight sustainability issues and teach us how to we can live a greener life.
In Bristol the main event was the launch of our new book, ’52 Big Ideas for Bristol’. A turnout of over 100 guests arrived to hear our ideas, some of which were more ambitious than others, with great feedback and potential to take some ideas forward.
Particularly popular were the ‘Colourful Capital’, ‘Foodmaps’, ‘City Workstations’ and ‘Winter Gardens’ ideas, which we hope we can see put into practice, especially a number of the smaller ideas which can link together to create some great outdoor spaces across the city (think bbq stations and social seating under tree canopy, across the road from a wildflower walk).
To get your copy, ’52 Big Ideas for Bristol’ is available for free digital download, so take a look and get inspired!
Following our overall food theme, our Bristol office was also taught about the global impact of our food choices, and how we can make a positive change, through the simple breakdown of the CO2 emissions of a ham sandwich. The statistics were scary, opening our eyes to the huge impact food production has on our environment, especially for the meat eaters amongst us. The whole talk can be watched back through Periscope on our Twitter feed, it makes for an interesting watch! Meanwhile, our London team were getting a similar lesson by watching the ‘Cowspiracy’ documentary.
In Plymouth we were visited by Simon Bradbury of Plymouth University, who delivered a CPD on sustainable energy and billing performance, information which will help us reduce the running costs in our own buildings, and also in those we design. It was a fitting talk for the Plymouth team, having recently installed a number of photovoltaic panels on the roof after and arduous planning consultation.
Over in Bath there was a similar talk on Solar PV, provided by Brian Penny of Romag. He used ‘Kingsgate house’ in Chelsea (above) as a case study. The scheme has utilised ‘green/gold’ coloured PV as part of the façade treatment, fully integrating the energy generation into the ‘architecture’ of the building to quite beautiful effect. Amazingly this was a ‘social housing’ scheme too!
Tomorrow it’s ‘Act Local Tuesday’, with food maps, chalk spray and the planning of an insect hotel… Stay tuned.