Event Recap: Built Environment for the Future – Sustainability Sandbox Session

This recent event encouraged Nextgen collaboration for climate action, calling on young architects, engineers, ecologists, cost and planning consultants, project managers, contractors and specialists in the built environment to contribute!

Buro Happold and Allies and Morrison have created a cross-disciplinary network for young professionals to learn together and champion sustainability in more projects by applying and understanding other’s skills and expertise.

Through a series of engaging sessions and events we hope to improve our work through interconnectivity and knowledge-sharing.

Our first session consisted of a series of talks from young professionals across the industry, who are all working towards improving the built environment in their respective fields. This was followed by an open and honest Q&A session.

What did we learn?

1. Across the industry, young built environment professionals recognise the need for change and have the energy and passion to learn from each other.

There is a group of the next generation of built environment professionals who are knowledgeable and passionate. We believe we need to be harnessing this and fresh ideas that people have in order to drive the transformational change we need to see in the industry.

2. Collaborating in a non-work setting is valuable

There is great value in removing ourselves from project specific scenarios. By getting together and talking about things holistically and systematically it felt like we could learn without the pressures of deadlines and truly get to the crux of why, how and what we do.  It also meant people could be open and honest in our discussion, asking questions that we may not ask during project work, such as asking about the specific roles of design teams and client and delivery-side motivations. With speakers and attendees from client-side to contractors, we got a holistic view of everyone’s specific roles, and the opportunities and barriers we face.

3. A lot of the challenges faced are not inherently unsolvable, and through collaboration and action these can be overcome.

It felt to us, that barriers to sustainability that we often believe are inherent to building, could be solved through understanding each other and why we build, alongside rethinking ways of working. Amongst discussion around common barriers we face to sustainability, such as programme and cost, there were also learnings around interaction with local communities and tenants, lack of data and realising truly ethical supply chains. We hope through creating these spaces for people to talk freely and creatively we can make tangible actions that we can take into our projects.

Next event- Please join us on Tuesday 16th August, 6-8 pm, for our second gathering at Allies and Morrisons