CURRENTLY WORKING ON

NOT JUST HOMES! - People and the in-between

Since January 2023, I have been writing my next book, focusing on the relationship between humans and places at a domestic, street and neighbourhood scales. By exploring how we develop as individuals and members of our societies, and the role our places play in our development, I aim to find out critical design parameters that make our lives more rewarding, fulfilling and ultimately, healthier.

THE ABC OF QUALITY SUSTAINABLE DESIGN

Book abstract

Modern lifestyles and constant population growth are putting pressure on a planet that is already struggling to sustain life. Living in a world that revolves around mass consumption has exacerbated social inequalities and the impact we as a species impose on the natural world. As a result, some experts are now moving towards what many call ‘inclusive capitalism’; an approach with a keener eye on sustainability. In 2020, Legal & General explained this model as “using money and investment as a force for good, to create real jobs and better infrastructure to transform the UK’s cities and towns and tackle the biggest issues of our times such as housing, climate change and ageing demographics.”

The built environment gives us ample opportunity to implement these changes. In 2015, the United Nations launched the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), a framework that considered all three aspects of sustainability: Economy, Environment and Society. Achieving a more equitable society, with a more balanced distribution of wealth, whilst inflicting less damage to the planet, were all strong motivators in determining these goals.

This is why it matters so much that cities and neighbourhoods are thought of as complex ecosystems. Understanding place and context as ecological platforms means embracing a resilience approach based on intelligent use of existing resources and development of mechanisms that would help us to overcome future threats.

With sustainable development and resilience-building at the heart of the debate, this book centres on the issues discussed above, and explores how that knowledge can be transferred into models for application in practice. Crucially, the case studies show that there are some persistent issues in industry that could be avoided by adopting a new approach:

1.      Lack of accountability on some of the determinants of sustainable development, which leads to an overview of some crucial aspects in favour of others.

2.      Unbalanced design decisions that carry long term effects which impact directly on both the environment and its people.

3.      Attempts to automitise the built environment field that lead to an increased complexity and over-reliance on software, which results in a gradual decay of the higher education curricula in favor of technology over critical knowledge.

4.      Lack of collaboration and communication amongst parties, often for fear of relinquishing control.

Through an in-depth analysis of real life examples, the difficulties I found in practice demonstrate why my ‘ABC of Quality Sustainable Design’ (Accountability, Balance and Collaboration) can be a solution to deliver more sustainable, higher quality development.

Let’s assume that we are aiming to deliver Sustainable Development by addressing Economy, Environment and Society in equal measure. We now can start considering each stage of the built product lifespan, trying to apply the quality assurance ethos that stresses that both product and process are equally relevant for achieving design quality.

To implement this type of thinking efficiently and effectively in design practice, three key steps are necessary:

This way, overall value for money could be clearly expressed without the risk of over-compromising on any of the spheres. This approach evidences the importance of negotiation skills and how designers need to be trained in working with trade-offs during the design process. For instance, planning officers might want a low building but they might accept an extra storey if that means providing larger green spaces.

C. Collaboration

The caveat with this approach is that, in order to negotiate trade-offs, agencies and experts from all three spheres need to work closely together. Crucially, all parties need to make their goals very clear, debate each other’s expectations and create a shared vision from the outset. Along the process, everyone involved should refer back to that vision, evaluating the scheme against it to make sure cuts have not over-compromised any of the spheres.

PhD RESEARCH

The study sat within the socio-political and legislative context of a transition time worldwide, when globalisation, a communication revolution, mass migration, climate change and economic rebalancing were changing the face of the world. The work aimed to resolve some of the challenges urban practice was facing to adopt complex, systemic and multidisciplinary appraisal processes that could help deliver more sustainable neighbourhoods, looking at public life in the public realm in British neighbourhoods.

The study adopted the concept of neighbourhood coined by Barton (2000, pp.4-5): the physical environment; the community; and human perceptions of their area. All encapsulated within six core dimensions of place proposed by Carmona et.al (2010, p.viii): ‘morphological’, ‘social’, ‘perceptual’, ‘visual’, ‘functional’ and ‘temporal’ dimensions. The research concerned the first three dimensions.

Traditionally, urban studies, design guidance and planning policy in Britain have been largely dominated by morphology literature. More recently, methods for appraising the quality of the public realm were developed. However, these approaches focused on the physical aspects of place, neglecting other dimensions.

The core element of the research involved the adaptation of social sciences’ tools and their application to appraise two urban neighbourhoods in Nottingham, and two semi-rural towns in North East Derbyshire. The empirical study applied a variety of methods, including quantitative analysis and phenomenological interpretation.

The adopted social tools were tested in professionally-led, community-led and authority-led engagement processes to inform planning policy. The correlated findings demonstrated that all three dimensions were strongly interconnected: road hierarchy, social spheres and enclave-belonging behaviours correlated; informal contact at a street level was strongly related to street patterns; public building provision was associated with the creation and development of social networks; and the value that neighbours gave to public places had correlation with certain urban characteristics of place but not with professional evaluations of urban quality.

This new knowledge made two main contributions to urban practice: methodological, with the introduction of feasible ways to appraise the social and perceptual dimensions of place in neighbourhoods; and empirical, with evidence-based validation of existing synergies between three dimensions of place in neighbourhoods. It also contributed to urban literature and opened channels for further research.

The thesis demonstrated that studies that neglect social and perceptual dimensions, emphasising on morphology, might result in limited or incomplete interpretations of place. An assumption can be made on the basis of these empirical findings that other dimensions of place that escaped the scope of this research are equally important. Following the work, field practitioners and authorities are urged to note the relevance of multi-dimensional approaches to urbanism, an urgent reform that needs to be embedded in urban policy and practice.

NOTE: The findings of this research were crystallized in Nottingham Design Quality Framework and Co-PLACE.

MY PLACE AND ME

Book - work in progress

My Place and Me is a phenomenological study that focuses on the nature of the intimate relationship a child can establish with their home environment and the role of that relationship in shaping the child’s identity.

To illustrate the idea, the publication takes the reader on a journey across a decade of my childhood: from 1976 to 1985. During that time, significant events triggered strong emotional responses that in my eyes, became deeply associated with my place. Those experiences, and the capacity of my place to offer me resources, inevitably defined some aspects of my personality. My place equipped me with coping mechanisms and personal rituals that I will probably carry for life.

In the first chapter, place and people are briefly described to set the scene and familiarise the reader with the home environment where the events took place. Chapters 2 to 11 describe events in detail and debate how the emotional bonds with place were gradually developed, shaping my individual identity and some of my coping strategies. Chapter 12 summarises the main components of place that were relevant to the stories and how these might have enabled my childhood development from the perspective of anthropological research.

DEMENTIA FRIENDLY PLACES

During my PhD studies, I developed an interest for health and well-being focused urban design. In collaboration with Public Health England, I developed a comprised design criteria for dementia-friendly places. Designing with dementia in mind can be helpful to many people, especially the most vulnerable, and so this criteria is now embedded in the Housing Design Guide for Nottingham City.

LINGUISTICS OF ARCHITECTURE

After my studies (2003-2007), I became increasingly interested in the grammar and dialectics of architecture, a passion that resulted in a series of research papers on the linguistics of composition that included an analogical study of architectural composition and Chomsky’s theories.