Engineering Carbon. A Small Practice Perspective - The Bartlett International Lectures

About

Streamed live on The Bartlett School of Architecture's YouTube channel, this event will be a discussion between host Peter Scully and speaker Peter Laidler.

This event forms part of The Bartlett International Lectures Autumn 2021.

This autumn and spring, each of the International Lectures will be curated by one of the school's programmes to inspire, invent, imagine, and provoke. This event is curated by Design for Manufacture MArch.

Abstract

Engineering Carbon. A Small Practice Perspective

We are finally waking up to the climate and biodiversity emergency, and all disciplines within the built environment will need to put their collective shoulders to the wheel if we are to address this across the whole of the system that plans, realises and uses. 

To what extent is engineering a tool to address carbon consumption? The skills forged enroute to structural efficiency have much to contribute to carbon efficiency, but this needs to happen from the outset. Working across the structural engineering spectrum from established norms to the highly bespoke, Structure Workshop has allowed innovation to feed convention and for convention to build a platform that supports innovation. This technical fluency may be instructive in the reduction of carbon associated with design.

Biography

Peter Laidler founded Structure Workshop in 2004 and has since worked with many award-winning architects and internationally recognised artists to realise a series of challenging and bold projects. These include buildings at Carlisle Cathedral and Cambridge University, as well as large scale sculptures around the world. 

As practice director Peter maintains responsibility for strategic planning and the overall conceptual design approach of the practice. In recent years his primary focus has shifted to reducing the environmental impact of structural solutions via a collaborative design approach based on technical excellence, material innovation and low carbon outcomes.

More information

• Find out about Design for Manufacture MArch
• See the full programme of International Lectures

Image: 'No Building as Usual' - photo by Andy Billman, 2021