COMFORT AT THE EXTREMES

Extreme events are reshaping our lives. The COVID pandemic combined with weather trends are escalating the need to adapt rapidly to design for safer, healthier and more affordably comfortable buildings, without destroying the Planet. Keeping abreast of evolving scientific developments is essential to enabling us to deal with such challenges, while also offering future investment opportunities for the forward looking.

Huge risks exist for all of us in ignoring necessary changes until it is too late for our lives, businesses, buildings and cities. Misunderstanding the scale of the problems around us is perhaps the major jeopardy we face, leading us to ignore new ways of doing things differently. That is why we are organising the TWO CATE22 events in 2022 – to help connect designers to some of the best, independent thinkers in the field of resilient Building Design, so they need not ‘miss out’.

7^TH April 2022 WORKSHOP: RESILIENT DESIGN: CLIMATE CHANGE, COVID AND VENTILATION. A One Day Workshop in London for Designers, Developers, Planners and Researchers on the latest Resilient Design thinking.

5^th – 6^th September 2022 CONFERENCE: RESILIENT COMFORT: CLIMATE CHANGE, COVID AND VENTILATION. A Two Day Conference in Edinburgh for Researchers, Architects, Engineers, Policy Makers and Property Developers and Investors linking climate extremes, COVID and comfort to new thinking of ventilation and building design.

PLEASE JOIN US FOR ONE – OR BOTH – OF THESE EVENTS, AIMED AT HELPING DELEGATES TO BE A POSITIVE PART OF THE CHANGE WE NEED TO HAPPEN FOR SOCIETIES TO SURVIVE MORE SAFELY, COMFORTABLY AND HEALTHILY IN OUR INCREASINGLY UNPREDICATABLE WORLD.

‘Having been a thought leader in the Solar, Sustainability and Adaptive Comfort Movements I sense that COVID really has Tipped the Balance, moving design on from being a simulation dominated process, producing 20^th century, Business-As-Usual building stereotypes, paying lip service to environmental concerns; to being a tool in our ability to adapt.

COVID is now a major driver, refocussing architecture towards future-facing – innovative – 21^st Century building types and opportunities. It is Time to Design to Survive and Thrive. We will have to fundamentally rethink how and where we create buildings and transform our existing stock. The courage to lead change will inevitably be bolstered by the fact that – at one end of the construction market – no major clients will want to be left with a portfolio of unsellable developments – and at its other end – no family will want to occupy a home that makes them ill or unhappy.

During COVID we learnt that no one is safe until everyone is safe, so we need to act urgently to protect the most vulnerable in society – in schools, hospitals and homes for the elderly – in a movement that elevates buildings beyond being simply tradable assets, to seeing them as part of a built environment that is at the vanguard of our fight for a safer future for all.

I will go to both these events, eager to learn from top experts about how we can build that safer future, and I invite you to join us there, on the front line in our fight for more resilience in the built environment.‘

Sue Roaf
Emeritus Professor of Architectural Engineering
Heriot Watt University

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