Design Skills Symposium 2014Day 1 Newsletter

Jim MacDonald, Chief Executive, A+DS

Jim welcomed delegates to the fourth Design Skills Symposium with a reminder of the challenge for participants: to think differently about how we do places. Over the next two days the Symposium will look at how we use the assets that we already have, how to create healthy, active neighbourhoods and how to increase community empowerment. Together these are key to effective placemaking and to the delivery of wider Scottish Government outcomes which recognise the need for place-based solutions and partnership to deliver change.

The Minister was delighted by the attendance at the symposium, evidence of the commitment to build skills to create better places.He noted the importance of working creatively, learning and refining techniques for and from the real world, the opportunities to network and to be inspired by international examples, including Melbourne which consistently ranks highly in the list of liveable cities and where design has been a catalyst in delivering this. He touched on the 2006 Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne and how Scotland was keen to learn lessons from the Glasgow Games.

He highlighted the great anticipation for the Games and the transformational change already delivered – world class sports amenities, green infrastructure, better connections to the River Clyde and a social legacy through investments, for example in a care home. The regeneration has been invaluable in delivering employment opportunities and has also made smart use of assets that we already had in place.

The Minister reminded us that Creating Places, launched in 2013, sets out how design can deliver value and should be at the heart of planning decisions. He outlined the Scottish Government’s support of the Charette process

and how it responds to local conditions, allowing citizens to fully contribute in developing places.

He underlined that the Design Skills Symposium makes a valuable contribution to supporting those involved in planning and welcomed the establishment of the Local Authority Urban Design Forum by A+DS. He encouraged the delegates to sharpen their pencils and get stuck in to the challenges over the next two days and hoped that the confidence gained through participating in the DSS will transfer to communities across the country.

Sharpen Your Pencils! Design Skill Symposium 2014 is launched by Derek MacKay, Minister for Local Government and Planning

An international perspective: Geoffrey London

The first day’s keynote speaker, Geoffrey London (Government Architect for Victoria, Australia) spoke about how a design-led approach is catalysing positive change in Melbourne, and how the Commonwealth Games has left a strong placemaking legacy.

In championing design quality there is a challenge to reflect on what good design is and how it can be promoted. A range of advocacy initiatives were described that included: gaining senior support, identifying realistic budgets, and demanding good design through briefing processes. Design needs to be considered from the outset, and implications of procurement methods must be understood.

Competitions can help encourage new and emerging practices and several projects were illustrated such as refurbishment of the rail station, reactivation of the main square, and design of roads to provide a rich urban experience rather than a mere technical exercise.

By the late 1800s Melbourne was ‘solid, fine and built for eternity’; however, by 1988 the inner city had ‘died’ and people no longer lived in the centre’s streets and lanes. Geoffrey described how the ‘Postcode 3000’ initiative (on exhibit at the Lighthouse) turned the city around and was “an outcome of purposeful decision making with design at its core”. Initiatives such as relaxed regulations encouraged conversions

to residential, and streets were re-populated. Public realm improvements demonstrated commitment, pride and civic quality. Super blocks were divided in keeping with local character and identity, and restaurants and bars opened in lanes which became lively and active.

It was questioned whether the latest residential boom may have gone too far, as interest focuses more on yield and return rather than owner occupation; and it has been necessary to develop a design code to improve and maintain apartment design standards.

Melbourne has benefitted from becoming an events city with lively, active public spaces. The Commonwealth Games not only helped to provide (and extend) facilities but also engaged the community through volunteering, cultural events and providing free public transport which encouraged longer term use. Tourism and trade investments have also leverage benefits.

In tackling the issue of how to quantify the benefits of good design Geoffrey concluded that we need to communicate and learn from each other and there is value in demonstrating case studies.

All the presentations from Day 1 are available here

http://issuu.com/adsdesignskills2014

Glasgow: Setting the scene

Martin McKay, Clyde Gateway

Martin provided an overview of the work of Clyde Gateway, an organisation set up to develop and regenerate a large area of Glasgow’s East End. This area of over 2,000 acres has a number of challenges, primarily the high concentration of derelict sites, and very high levels of contamination – the question was how to talk about design within these constraints.

Partnerships were established with various organisations, as well as conversations and collaborations with community groups and other interested parties. Collectively their aim was to deliver a long term regeneration initiative to deliver on sustainability, economy and community (or People, Place and Economy).

A design statement was produced – ‘Character and Values’ – which set out clearly what they were trying to achieve. The overarching ambition was to build upon the proud history, heritage and local characteristics of different neighbourhoods, as well as putting in place the necessary infrastructure and connectivity needed to establish areas such as the East End as a place to visit, live and work.

Gerry Grams, Glasgow City Council

Gerry’s presentation focussed on the ways in which Glasgow City Council is maximising the legacy of the Commonwealth Games for the benefit of Glasgow. Dalmarnock, in the East End, was chosen as the site for the athlete’s village, due to its close proximity to the centre of Glasgow and the potential for regeneration of an area of high deprivation.

The athlete’s village requires a vast amount of accommodation for the Games, but this is an opportunity for Glasgow to create affordable housing, and a new way of living as a result of the investment in the Games. The Council created a masterplan, which could deliver on the demands of the Games, but could also be adaptable and flexible enough to change and develop over time.

Key elements of the masterplan include opening up the river as an asset, ensuring a model scheme which has landscape at its heart, creating better circulation and routes, a variety of tenure, design which adheres to a simple vernacular, is high-quality and flexible. 700 homes were built in 700 days with a lot of important learning for Scotland. This is a complex plan, which has a specific short term purpose, but long term ambition. An additional key success has been the way in which the Council has adopted better team working and collaboration, to achieve better outcomes for Glasgow.

Community Empowerment

Béla Kézy

Béla began his presentation highlighting that 50% of the global population now live in cities, with even higher percentages in Europe (74%) and Scotland itself (81.4%). As a result, cities have become places of great concentration: talent, services and housing, but also of greenhouse gas emissions, segregation and social exclusion. This, he argued, makes cities a good place to start if you want to focus on the wider problems. Béla emphasised that, globally, cities share surprisingly similar challenges, so why try and reinvent the wheel? Great cities steal ideas and URBACT offers a framework to share these ideas on urban development. Béla finished his talk emphasising the importance of participation and co-creation; talking about the real relevant issues and working together from the very beginning. He ended with a quote:

“The city is like an open source software, nobody owns it, everybody can use it, and everybody can improve it”

Workshops and Site Visits...

Building ValueLawrence Barth

Lawrence showed examples of projects where different links of a ‘value chain’ collaborate to increase their value together and become drivers for change. He argued that there can sometimes be too much focus on public realm and the space between buildings, instead of creating the clusters of activity that then will form the critical mass that creates the need for these public spaces.

In regeneration or event led projects, the drivers for change are the things that bring people or businesses together. As in the case of the Cleveland Baseball Stadium where 50,000 people move in an out of the city centre 75 times in a year, where employing an architecture that connects to its surroundings gives great benefit to cafés, bars and small businesses. Whether when creating a new business park in Singapore or redeveloping docklands in Hamburg, clustering of all life’s activities and buildings can give rise to the critical mass that necessitates public space, from inside the buildings and out.

Creative Use of Vacant LandDermot Foley

Dermot Foley introduced the EU Transitioning towards Urban Resilience and Sustainability [TURaS] research group - encompassing a network of European cities and forming an interlink between research, design and teaching. He outlined his role in developing research mechanisms to unlock the potential for vacant, abandoned or contaminated land focusing on two questions; How can we use these site to contribute to resilience in cities?

And how can we create healthy and sustainable neighbourhoods without relying on masterplans?

To date TURaS have developed in an integrated planning model, a three-phase framework that will become a product of participatory planning. Outlining the findings to date Dermot noted that many common problems coming from research and practice can be categorized into the following: perception, scope, strategy, technique and communication leading him to believe that the ideal scenario for resilience planning is one of experimentation within a systematic framework, that is a flotilla rather than an all encompassing spaceship. This means that small-scale, diversity, difference, unknown outcomes and the ability to fail are very important factors.

We’ve set up a Flickr set for all the images captured at the Design

Skills Symposium: if you would like to add to the set please

contact Sam Patterson from A+DS to upload them.

Check out the images on:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/73633090@N04/

Developed and delivered by Architecture + Design Scotland in partnership with the Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council, Clyde Gateway and Improvement Service and supported by others including Scottish Canals and VELOCITY.

More pictures from Day 1...