Peter Rice in the Serres at La Villette observed by Hugh Dutton, 1990
Photo: Michel Denancé
© Michel Denancé

Traces of Peter Rice

Marking 20 years since Peter Rice’s death, the exhibition Traces of Peter Rice will focus on  his contribution to five significant design projects including the Centre Pompidou and the Musée des Sciences et del’Industrie, Paris; the Menil Collection, Houston; the Full-Moon Theatre, Gourgoubès; and the proposal for the Groningen Museum in the Netherlands in collaboration with artist Frank Stella.

Jennifer Greitschus, Head of Exhibitions at Arup and curator of Traces of Peter Rice said: “The legacy left by Peter Rice continues to resonate throughout the built environment and stimulate contemporary designers. In addition to showcasing past design stories, we are delighted to be presenting a new work by Tristan Simmonds inspired by Peter Rice’s collaboration with Humbert Camerlo on the Full-Moon Theatre.”

In 1992 Peter Rice was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in recognition of his exceptional contributions to the design of the built environment. Kevin Barry, editor of the book Traces of Peter Rice writes: “Whether adapting nature’s patterns to build flexible structures, or transforming our experience of the ecology of light, Peter Rice’s public spaces delight and surprise with their sensual mathematics. Through his innovative use of materials, especially glass and steel, Peter Rice pushed the boundaries of his discipline”.

The exhibition reminds the designers, engineers, and artists of today that Peter Rice’s most influential projects relied equally on fierce ingenuity and devoted collaboration. The exhibition features prototypes, maquettes, drawings, paintings, photography and a new documentary film. There are also references to Peter Rice’s love of poetry, his interests in horse racing and nature as well as personal photographs, which capture the spirit of the times.

On show in London at Arup Phase 2 until 5 April 2013, with subsequent tour to the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris in May 2013, and then to the Farmleigh Gallery, Dublin in October 2013.

The book – Traces of Peter Rice – is a collaboration between Arup, Culture Ireland, the Centre Culturel Irlandais and the Irish Office of Public Works, bringing together contributions from family, friends, artists, scholars and colleagues from the worlds of engineering and architecture, including Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano, Andy Sedgwick and Sophie Le Bourva. It can be purchased online at www.lilliputpress.ie.

What influencing factors are shaping the future of retail? What role will physical stores play in a future dominated by e-commerce? How will retailers effectively deliver goods and services across all channels? What is the future of the brand?

Retail is a highly dynamic sector that exists at a complex nexus between property, design, information and communications technology (ICT), logistics, fashion and popular culture. The outlook for the retail sector is extremely challenging, with many retailers facing market saturation and increased commoditisation. Most retailers are also wrestling with new multi-channel strategies to drive sales, while under pressure to consider the environmental and social impacts of their operations.

Arup’s Future of Retail report reveals important trends shaping retail’s future and looks at some of the likely impacts of these on retail environments. It looks at how consumer expectations and behaviours are changing and assesses the technologies that are impacting the retail experience, both in-store and on-line.

Buy the paperback on Lulu or register below to download the report:

[contact-form-7]

Built Environment Modelling (BEM) offers excellent opportunities to make meaningful stakeholder and public engagement not only possible but also cost effective.  People power is essential for getting necessary change and radical design innovations adopted, but to participate in innovation people need to be informed.

To help the firm make full use of, and shape the development of the most useful, BEM tools, Arup’s Foresight, Innovation & Incubation group is engaged in an ongoing review of new design software and innovative applications of existing software.  More than simple desk research, the review involves testing and using a range of applications in collaboration with academics, as well as conducting in-depth discussions with suppliers, talking to other users and participating in conferences and ideas workshops.

The vision of the Future Tools program is to move beyond the now proven benefits of component-based modelling (coordinated and up-to-date design information) and to harness the benefits of digital tools that can involve clients and other stakeholders in the design process.  We are not advocating co-design, but we do strongly believe that giving people the chance to experience, understand and support proposals is essential for achieving change and innovation in the built environment.

Future Tools Vision one – BEM for stakeholder engagement: driving the adoption of change and radical design innovation

The vision two of the future tools program looks at how Built Environment Modelling (BEM) can provide a collaborative platform for design inception. This vision researches today’s design exploration process and how BEM can assist by helping explore a variety of ideas to identify the best design solution.

This vision also provides concrete examples explaining the workflow of already existing future tools like the bowl geometry simulation tool and tall building simulation tool.

Future Tools Vision two – BEM for collaborative design inception: harnessing the power of clients’ design intuition

Future tools vision three explores the opportunity for designers to create interactive and immersive models with inter-related physics – including a mix of real and symbolic representation – and facilitate experiential design. These virtual models will allow designers to explore experientially hundreds of potential multidisciplinary design combinations, both qualitatively and quantitatively, in a practical and cost effective way.

Future Tools Vision three – Digital environments for experiential design: enhancing designers’ perception

Report cover

• Develop an insight into the China energy industry
• Understand the China energy situation and status, and analyze selected hot energy topics in China
• Further explore the development trend of China energy sector, especially the impact of China energy 12th “Five Year Plan”
• Based on the research and analysis on energy hot topics, propose questions from different perspectives to facilitate the discussion of possible solutions
• Lay the foundation for future energy-related research and development in China, while identifying the research direction and seek for potential academic partners
• Seek for appropriate business opportunities in China’s energy industry through research collaboration

Please register your details below to download report:

Interior, St Catherine’s College, Oxford Photo © St Catherine’s College Archive

The 50th Anniversary of St Catherine’s College, Oxford

Phase 2 Gallery, 25 June – 31 August 2012

Arne Jacobsen (1902-71) created a fully integrated architectural design that incorporated furnishings, fixtures and cutlery manufactured by leading Danish manufacturers of the day including Vola A/S, Louis Poulsen and Fritz Hansen. Ove Arup (1895-1988) was consulting engineer.

Curated and designed by Friend and Company Architects, part of the British Council’s International Architecture and Design Showcase 2012.

Where does money come from and how does it work? National accounts provide a mine of data for understanding the productive capacity of an economy and how sectors of the economy interact. Simon Roberts takes us through these systemic dependencies by introducing a novel flow diagram. The diagram reveals the connection between economic output and investment back into infrastructure. Banking plays a key role in where this investment is directed. Simon contends that the high investment into the service sector must be maintained to keep unemployment down. He goes on to propose that improving energy efficiency and renewable energy, for instance, need diversion of more investment.

During my week at Arup I worked on several projects. On the thursday I used Autodesk 123d for the first time, I quickly adapted and found it very easy to use, so I came up with a little design for myself. This was one of my favourite projects because it was very interesting to use, and a lot different from what I’ve done before.

Throughout the week I attended many meetings, in not only the Arup offices but places such as the TFL (Transport For London) offices. I also visited Centre Point, this was a site visit to check the availability for an event at a later date. This was amazing because I got to experience the spectacular views across London. All meetings were very interesting because they gave me a good understanding of what meetings are like, and how they are carried out.

On the Tuesday and Wednesday I designed and created nametags for a workshop on the Wednesday. I really enjoyed doing this because it really made me think about what I was doing; by this I mean I had to be very accurate with the measurements and cutting out. This project was a good experience for me because I had to do it independently.

One thing that surprised me about working in the office was the fact that there was so many meetings, before I started I thought there would be about 1-3 in the week, however there were many more than that which surprised me.

My favourite memory will definitely be playing crazy-golf on the roof of Selfridges with the foresight team, with me and Josef being joint champions. This will be my favourite memory because it was great fun and it was a very good way to socialise with the team, also a great way to see their high ability in the office was as good outside.

A select audience of around 20 delegates were invited from organisations such as Dow Corning, the International Centre for the Environment (based out of Bath University), the Construction Products Association and MIRO.

Ed opened the Salon event with a fascinating talk during which he presented over 100 of his stunning photographs, covering diverse subjects ranging from copper mines and oilfields, to water-intensive cotton fields and Bangladeshi ship breakers yards. In presenting his imposing yet poignant photography, Ed explained the context of his artistic endeavors in terms of documenting humanity’s impact on the planet. His commentary touched on a myriad of prescient themes: urbanisation, mobility, energy security, aquifer depletion and undocumented labour among them.

A thought provoking, contemplative blog post about Ed’s talk can be read here, written by Andrew Curry from the Futures Company.

After a lively Q&A we then ran a short workshop to capture some of the headline issues and trends shaping the future of the resources and materials debate.

Ed Burtynsky’s show at the Photographer’s Gallery ends on Sunday 1^st July. If you haven’t seen it do go as it is truly fantastic.

The morning started with a series of presentations followed by a Q&A. The three presentations raised a number of fascinating ideas around the long-term drivers of change and user-centric design. Of the drivers presented by Duncan Wilson, who leads Arup Foresight in the UK, the most pertinent in the context of surface access include location awareness and self-surveillance. The availability of location-aware information is certain to lead to a raft of new, highly personalised and contextualised customer services. This has increased the complexity of what is available to users and opens the door for new service offerings. Consider a future where mobile technology can communicate a motorist’s delay and receive from Gatwick a notification giving the driver instructions as to where to locate a valet attendant for a fast-track emergency drop-off, with directions to least congested check-in counter. The trend towards collaborative consumption may also be highly impactful for surface transport, particularly car ownership. Car clubs may just be the start of a move away from personal ownership and more demand responsive services.

Ben Reason, Director at Live|Work, then introduced the concept of a user-centric approach to the design of services, requiring that providers look at the whole lifecycle of a user’s behaviour or experience in order to look for opportunities for improvement or innovation.

Anand Vengurlekar from the Danish consultancy Stoic then presented some thought-provoking views on the consumer journey. He reminded delegates that in the age of Twitter and the micro blog, it just takes one person to have a bad experience for it to be broadcast to an online audience of many thousands. He then challenged the audience to find new, creative ways to genuinely differentiate a branded service.

A workshop exercise was then undertaken by four break-out groups, looking at the future of surface access over the next two decades. We used fictional future characters or personas to help delegates imagine a possible journey in 2030, and to identify what needs and desires a typical passenger may have.

The ideas generated by the event will help to shape a transformational Gatwick Airport surface access strategy, to be launched later this year.

Where you are, who you are and how you live. make your mark, bring your area to life.

It’s where you are, who you are and how you live… your place on the map. MyStreet is a living archive of everyday life, encouraging you to make your mark and bring your area to life.

We are delighted to announce that the following MyStreet films from London have been selected for screening in our film booth in Phase 2, MON – FRI, 9.00am to 6.00pm and on Saturday 30 June, 10.00am until 5.00pm. Screenings continue until 5 October:

• Greenwich Peninsula – A tale of two halves
• Chapel Market
• A Walk in the Park
• Remains
• Soapy Vinegar Water
• Our Park, Vicky Park
• Victoria, George, Edward and Thatcher
• Slang
• Shadow and Sun
• 76 Seconds
• Anthony

My St. virtual London map. Many thanks to Damien McCloud, Rhodri Morgan, Emily Bowden-Eyre for developing the augmented reality and to Radha Mistry, Roy Salfarlie and Katherine Prater for helping to create the map.

Winners of the Schools Challenge

The schools challenge asked kids to explore what our world will look like in the year 2050. It invited them to come up with ideas for solving some of our biggest challenges, explain how they worked and how they will benefit society. The prize for the schools challenge is two HD Flip Cameras – one for the winning team and one for their school.

We had a large number of great submissions and it was really hard to find a winner. Many of the schools submissions focussed on solving problems like unemployment, debt and climate change. There were some innovative and surprising ideas, including baby simulators and a shift to a hydrogen based economy. However, there could only be one winning group and they are Matthew Hood, George Raybould, Ellen Honybun, Robert Lawrence and Josh Cockett from the Cornwallis Academy in Kent for their great submission on the future of renewable energy, housing, and sustainable cities. Some of their best suggestions included: freeing up funds for renewable energy system investment, increasing urban vegetation by making use of unused plots and spaces, and focusing more research and investment on retrofitting and improving existing homes. Their vision for a sustainable cities are capture in the images below, including a blueprint for a rooftop dome that can make existing houses more sustainable. We were also particularly impressed by their suggestions for using Hyde Park as a space for urban agriculture, designing green hats for the Queens Guard, and developing a new grass facade for the London’s Gherkin building. 

Winner of the University Challenge

The university challenge focused on inviting students from a wide variety of backgrounds to send us there ideas and solutions for our world in 2050.  

The winner of the student competition was Charlotte Fiegner. Charlotte is a student of Design Anthropology at Swinburne University, Melbourne. She produced a great video called Designing Cities of the Future that used the Drivers of Change cards to tell a story about some of the biggest challenges facing cities today and in the future and how to make cities a better place to live. Charlotte will join Foresight’s Stuart Candy for a two week internship at the Melbourne office.

Please click play to see Charlotte’s video:

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all teachers and participants for their submissions and contributions. We would also like to thank MyKindaCrowd for their great support in making these two challenges happen.

For further information on this project, please contact josef.hargrave@arup.com

Zumbotel is one of the world’s leading lighting fixture groups. Luebkeman also participaed in the panel of Zumbotel’s Light + Building 2012 conference in Frankfurt.

Please click on the version you would like to download.

English – City of the future

Deutsche – Stadt der Zukunft