Greengaged

Fancy a sneaky peak at Friday’s material ‘speed date’ session? Well, imagine a room full of makers and creaters, specifiers and promoters ...all waiting to talk to you and answer those burning questions you have about materials!

Next week, Friday’s morning session ‘the knowledge transfer workshop’ promises to take you step-by-step (actually stride by stride as we will be moving at pace around the tables) through that part of the design process where you decide on the material you will build, mould, construct and design with. If you are confused as to how to start specifying sustainable materials or if you want to question some piece of potential greenwash seen on a product then bring your questions and samples along to present to our amazing assemblage of experts which includes Chris Wise from Expedition Engineering, Guy Robinson from Sprout Design, Christopher Pett from Pli Design, recent RCA graduate Thomas Thwaite and other esteemed people from Arup, BRE, Giraffe Innovation, One Planet Products, Saint-Gobain, Smile Plastics and Wrap, with others still confirming.

Register your place here.

Register for this unique trip around the Olympic Park with Dan Epstein, Head of Sustainability and Regeneration. This tour will have particular focus on the sustainable approach taken to materials used on the site.

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On Wednesday, 23rd September, Michael Pawlyn, founder of Exploration Architecture, will host day three of this years greengaged hub, Biomimicry in Design: Learning from Nature. Join Michael Pawlyn, a pioneer of biomimetic architecture, and other prominent thinkers in this rapidly emerging area of design for this day of astounding talks and inspiring workshops. If ants can make zero waste, solar powered, sustainable architecture; how can we apply their ‘intelligence’ and 3.5 billion years of research and development to human focused, sustainable design?

Read more about the day after the jump... and click here to book your place now! 

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Bringing together key figures since the 1960s who have created utopian works and inspiring solutions for our ever-changing planet, Radical Nature–Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet (1969–2009) is the current art and design exhibition open until 18 Oct 2009 at London's Barbican Centre. "The beauty and wonder of nature have provided inspiration for artists and architects for centuries. Since the 1960s, the increasingly evident degradation of the natural world and the effects of climate change have brought a new urgency to their responses."

Radical Nature draws on ideas that have emerged out of Land Art, environmental activism, experimental architecture and utopianism. The exhibition is designed as one fantastical landscape, with each piece introducing into the gallery space a dramatic portion of nature. Work by pioneering figures such as the architectural collective Ant Farm and visionary architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, artists Joseph Beuys, Agnes Denes, Hans Haacke and Robert Smithson are shown alongside pieces by a younger generation of practitioners including Heather and Ivan Morison, R&Sie(n), Philippe Rahm architects and Simon Starling. Radical Nature also features specially commissioned and restaged historical installations, some of which are located in the outdoor spaces around the Barbican while a satellite project by the architectural collective EXYZT is situated off site. 

The RSA Art & Ecology network have offered a sneak insight into this must see environmental exhibition. If you have been to the show already or are planning on attending any of the forthcoming talks and events do let us know your thoughts!

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