Event Description
Healthier cities represent more productive places where one is happier to live and securely bring up children.
Cities renew themselves naturally. Older stock gives way to new uses, ways of living change demanding new infrastructure, transforming our lives for the better.
Remote work and city living demand more green lungs as public spaces, with the aim of creating healthier cities. 20th century methods are slowly giving way to innovative 21st century modality.
Airborne concentrations of gases and particulates we breathe are a regrettable corollary of urban living. According to David Attenborough speaking to the United Nations Security Council, “Our atmosphere now contains concentrations of carbon dioxide that have not been equalled for millions of years… If we continue on our current path, we will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security: food production, access to fresh water, habitable ambient temperature and ocean food chains… Climate change is the biggest threat to security that modern humans have ever faced… I don’t envy you the responsibility that this places on all of you.”
A paucity of alternatives and open discourse seems to have been made invisible. Likened to vanishing caloric density, our views seem tailored. Creativity should be brought forward. An alternative advanced by Cambridge University is CLT/ Engineered Mass Timber; if creating 1 unit of C02 in production, the common Hybrid Concrete and Steel creates nearly 4,000 - 5,000 equivalent units of C02; with concomitant energy use. This hybrid presently accounts for approximately half of global carbon emissions. Crystalline silica demolition dust we inhale can induce serious respiratory diseases and lung cancer. Innovative architecture and engineering research for cleaner healthful materials and better, faster methods benefitting from efficiencies in AI construction and procurement are needed to inspire a global societal challenge, bettering our civilization.
Speaker
Kevin P. Flanagan, AIA, FRAIC, Design Director, Dar/ Sidara/ Perkins & Will International
CES: Estimated 1 LU/ HSW for AIA Members
Speaker Bio
Kevin has over 35 years of experience realizing visionary award-winning designs Internationally. He is presently Design Director at Dar/Sidara/ Perkins & Will International in Dubai, Involved in projects in The Middle East and Africa. He is an Alumni of The Architectural Association/ AA, London, Carleton University, Ottawa, and University of Texas; having won a a Rome Prize Scholarship for research and teaching in Rome. His resulting Master's Thesis was accepted into the Bibliotheca Hertziana Max Planck Institute Library in Rome.
His work is habitually won through International competition. Kevin's most recently completed works include Assima City, a $800 million, 400,000 sqm/ 4 million sqft Mixed-use Retail/ Hotel and 380 m Landmark Tower in Kuwait, having won an innovation award for concrete, his One Shennan Road, at the Birthplace of the World's Fastest Growing City, Shenzhen, China, and two ongoing projects in West Africa.
Kevin's design for The Edge in Amsterdam most recently won the United Nations Sponsored "Global Model of Smart Green Building Award", at the 16th Global Forum on Human Settlements.
Kevin has earlier won three International Architecture Awards from the Chicago Anthenium Museum of Architecture and Design Awards for the Grant Thornton Tower in Chicago, the ADIA Headquarters in Abu Dhabi, and the DeHoftoren Ministry in The Hague, also the winner of the Inaugural International High Rise Award DAM/ Deutsches Architekturmuseum/ German Architecture Museum Frankfurt + DEKABANK Prize; the £70,000/ $100,000 Design Award seeded an International Student Traveling Fellowship.
Beyond the Chicago Anthenium, Kevin's Awards include a BREEAM/ Platinum Best Of the Best, a Sustainability Award comparable to LEED, the Urban Land Institute/ ULI Winner Global Awards for Excellence, the AIA EU Design Award/ Environmental Design, the American Architecture Prize, Gold Prize Award Architecture Design/ Green Architecture, and four International Architecture Masterprize Awards; Platinum Best High Rise, Gold Best Office Design, Silver Best Transport, and a Mention for Sustainable Public Building/ ROH Opera House.
Beyond ADIA HQ, and Assima City, he was the past designer of Marina Towers on the Cornice in Beirut, and the recently acclaimed IBQ Tower in Doha, Qatar.
He began his career at Site Architects, in NYC on projects involved in environmental art, winning a transport museum, and subsequently as Senior Associate Partner with KPF/ Kohn Pedersen Fox NYC, while a founding member of KPF International in London for 25 years, later acclaimed for two of seven selected shortlisted KPF projects, out of some 500 completed. Subsequently, and again as a founding member, as Partner of "breakaway" firm PLP Architecture, London, for 10 years.
Kevin is a Keynote speaker Internationally and continues to donate his time to teach at the University of Manchester School of Architecture, UK, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, Turkey, and also Cardiff University and significantly University of Cambridge.
Kevin has spoken several times Internationally as Keynote specifically in relation two of his designs, The Edge in Amsterdam, the World’s Most Sustainable and Best Example of IoT, and the Oakwood Timber Tower Series investigating natural Sustainable New Building technologies as alternatives in the construction of High Rises, ongoing research undertaken in collaboration with University of Cambridge.
