ABSTRACT
We know that we need to make cities healthier and more energy efficient. We also know that, to achieve this ambitious aim, the skills of many different kinds of people are required, including transport specialists, policy thinkers, planners, physicists and cultural commentators. Designers are a small part of the complex weave that generates a city. Nevertheless, being designers ourselves, we identify a need to focus our attention on developing an approach to designing more sustainable cities. Over the last three years we have been working with groups of post graduate architects at the University of North London, and environmental engineers from Fulcrum Consulting, in a collaborative attempt to develop such an approach. The collaboration is important since it is our view that only through a much more sophisticated understanding of the fields traditionally occupied by the respective disciplines of the architect and engineer can progress in sustainable urban design occur. Our project has been to establish a shared understanding of both the spatial and physical dimensions of city performance in order to create a synthesis of architectural and engineering skills. In essence, our three-year project has been to design an approach that can evolve viable urban patterns from the social and ecological realities of place.
