Architect Gone Rogue - Zinc Week 6

For myself, friends, family, former colleagues, future colleagues, clients, collaborators, acquaintances, investors, interested bystanders picked up on the way and other generally nosey people...

This is the journey of an Architect gone rogue and trying something different.

Week 6

Week 6 overall was less structured than previous weeks. I used the week to do a few different things and take stock of what came before.

My week began at The London School of Architecture to meet and answer questions on the Walworth Town Hall development process from old colleague Ashita Roongta , who is doing her MArch (RIBA Part 2) and whose favourite lecturer is my old boss James Soane . Sorry Ashita! ??

The Case for Nature

Siddarth Shrikanth, author of The Case For Nature and investor at Just Climate talked to the Zinc cohort about how the modern economy appreciates nature in extractive financial terms and how different stakeholders in different parts of the world are leveraging natural capital and its beneficiaries to instigate change.

Wired Impact

Natalia Baltazar and I attended the Wired Impact event at Magazine House, which saw a range of talks from speakers working in a variety of fields including bioplastics - Pierre-Yves Paslier at Notpla , vehicle to grid energy - Raman Bhatia at OVO , climate finance - Daria Saharova at World Fund , AI in climate tech - Sims Witherspoon at Google DeepMind and circular economy - Miranda Schnitger of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation , amongst others. It was also refreshing to see a Waugh Thistleton Architects stand, surrounded by mostly tech startups. More Architects should be this outward facing.

During the breaks we met Alexander Facey of SamudraOceans , who are embarking on UK based smart mega scale seaweed farming and Sri Ellen Hollema of Mat Zero , who is building personal heating solutions for refugee disaster relief, as well as familiar face and Zinc fellow Felicity O'Kelly and colleague Will Rowley of Climate Investment (CI) .

DAC (Direct Air Capture) in the Built Environment

I had fun speculating with Joss Rogers and Sidong Liu on incorporating bio-carbon capture into the urban environment. This took me back to my university days, where I had very unscientifically speculated on algae based facade panels (3D printed 1:10 scale prototype below). As scientifically this is Sidong's field, we talked about the the process of growing and automating the harvesting of algae to capture carbon from the air, before considering logistics and potential uses of grown material. Currently, organisations like Brilliant Planet bury the algae to sequester carbon. What if this could be turned into a commodity and used in bio-based building materials or for other uses - carbon removal as virgin material?

Muyiwa Oki - President, RIBA - Royal Institute of British Architects

I got to catch up with old pal, 英国谢菲尔德大学 peer and new RIBA president (King of the Architects for the next two years) Muyiwa Oki PRIBA . Referencing Muyiwa's thought piece on Architects needing to be agents of change, we spoke about the Zinc programme, Morgan Lewis of material index from the Zinc Venture Builder 5 cohort, the opportunities out there for Architect's to 'practice' in other ways, opportunities for the RIBA and where I might be heading next on this journey. Watch this space...

Learn more about Muyiwa Oki

Circular Waste Systems

Guy Naor and I continued our look into the potential for circular waste systems within the built environment with a view to try and 'cancel waste' by mapping out types of waste generated in the urban landscape, the current collection, sorting and processing of the waste, the commercial picture as well as new intellectual property available for commercialisation by waste type. The big idea is to localise and decentralise waste systems and have the value extracted at source, potentially even leading to localised industry, like in the Victorian period where London stock bricks were made on site and exported.

Next stop Hackney Council...

Thanks

David Janner-Klausner (he/him) for being a sounding piece ????

Alexandra Oti for organising the mental health roundtable at Zinc HQ ??

Kieran Walker for the 100 Projects UK CLT book ??

David Hopper for an interesting first exec coaching session ??

Muyiwa Oki PRIBA for entertaining the conversation about life beyond practice ??

Thought of the Week