Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
The fourth annual Architecture Professional Practice Symposium, and second to be streamed online, poses the question ‘What are our new infrastructures of collective value?’ From developing creative and cultural strategies which work towards democratic value, to recycling and retrofitting the built environment to reconsider the innovation of places for local people, developing revolutionary ‘dark matter’ to respond to the technological revolution or undertaking radical fieldwork to empower groups to respond to the climate emergency, architects are increasingly utilising their varied skills developing new infrastructures and collective futures.
About the event:
- Sarah Mills - Introduction
- Nisha Kurian, We Made That: ‘Building a Socially Integrated City’
- Naomi Rubbra, Footwork Trust & Rico Prince: ‘My Place: ‘I Live Here Too’
- Sowmya Parthasarathy, Arup: ‘International Perspectives on Inclusive City-making’
- Ben Cross, General Projects: ‘Restoration, Reuse and Revolution: The Need for a New Development Model’
- Indy Johar, Dark Matter Labs and Architecture 00: 'Radicle Civic Making'
- Q & A
Speaker Biographies:
Nisha Kurian, We Made That
Nisha is an Associate at We Made That. As an architect and urbanist she has a track record of enabling community-focused, cultural and workspace projects. Her approach to architecture has a social focus, centred around harnessing local energy and knowledge and working with local communities to give them greater agency over how they use, occupy and shape their built environment.
She is a registered architect and has a significant amount of mixed-use, civic and masterplanning regeneration experience in London-based practices, including prior roles at Adam Khan Architects, Maccreanor Lavington Architects and CarverHaggard Architects. She is a powerful voice in addressing diversity and representation in the built environment sector, including as programme leader initiating RE—SET—GO, a programme with the mission of diversifying architecture practices.
Nisha is a member of the LLDC Quality Review Panel and HS2 Independent Design Panel. She is also an Associate Lecturer at Central St Martins, University of the Arts London and a regular guest critic at architecture schools across the UK. She was recognised in The Planner’s Women of Influence for 2021.
Naomi Rubbra, Footwork Trust
Architect & Director of Operations at Footwork Naomi Rubbra is Director, Operations, of Footwork - a charity dedicated to ensuring clear social principles underpin development and drive good practice. Footwork operates as a social impact innovator, collaborator and funder to drive a built environment sector with a shared interest in the long-term success of communities. Prior to joining Footwork, Naomi worked as an architect specialising in the delivery of Passivhaus certified social housing. She has practiced around the world, most notably during a time in New York City, where her experiences shaped an award-winning thesis; ‘Building Resilient Communities in NYC: Rethinking gentrification and the role of the architect.’ During her MArch, Naomi won the 2019 RIBA President’s Dissertation Medal for her work ‘Towards effective architectural practice: lessons from the Elthorne Housing Estate.’ And she continues to advocate for situated & applied architectural education practices. In 2020, Naomi was a juror for the RIBA Annie Spink Award for Excellence in Architectural Education.
Rico Prince My Place Junior Project Coordinator
Rico leads My Place’s youth engagement work; the role is a natural progression from Rico’s extensive experience working with young people, including working as a teaching assistant and coaching young people. He has worked with many different types of young people through his work in both Special Educational Needs schools and mainstream education. Rico is hyper-local to Finsbury Park, living most of his life on the nearby Woodberry Down estate in Hackney. Rico has been involved in a number of projects on his estate, including a project he works on alongside My Place called ‘STAY’, where he works with developer Berkeley Homes and housing association Notting Hill Genesis to give a voice to young people on the Woodberry Down estate, and the ‘Regeneration Divide’ Documentary; a Footwork film exploring young people’s feelings on regeneration that inspired the idea that would become My Place.
Sowmya Parthasarathy, ARUP
Sowmya is an architect and urban designer with over 25 years of global experience in the UK, US, Middle East and India, leading Arup's Masterplanning and Urban Design team in London. She has been involved in London's 2012 Olympic Legacy Masterplan; a plan for the expansion of the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus in South Cambridgeshire and a new 7 square km urban district near Muscat Oman. In 2019, Sowmya took on the role as India’s Group Leader. Outside of Arup, she is a Mayor’s Design Advocate responsible for promoting design excellence as part of the Mayor of London's Good Growth by Design programme and sits on the London Design Review Panel, review panels for Transport for London and the Old Oak Park Royal Development Corporation.
Ben Cross, General Projects
Ben is responsible for leading and delivering major projects at General Projects and providing creative direction to branding and design. He has nearly 15 years’ experience delivering commercial, cultural and residential schemes across London and the UK. Prior to General Projects, Ben led a number of strategic regeneration schemes, managing over £½bn of GDV and delivering projects in the public and private sector.
Ben holds degrees in Architecture and Real Estate Development. He is also known as The Rockstar of Real Estate (not a self-proclaimed title).
Indy Johar, Dark Matter Labs
Indy Johar is an architect, co-founder of 00 (project00.cc) and most recently Dark Matter, Studio Master at AA. Indy, on behalf of 00, has co-founded multiple social ventures from Impact Hub Westminster to Impact Hub Birmingham, along with working with large global multinationals & institutions to support their transition to a positive Systems Economy. He has also co-led research projects such as The Compendium for the Civic Economy, whilst supporting several 00 explorations/experiments including the wikihouse.cc, opendesk.cc. Indy is a non-executive director of WikiHouse Foundation & RIBA Trustee and Advisor to Mayor of London on Good Growth.
Most recently he has founded Dark Matter - a field laboratory focused on radically redesigning the bureaucratic & institutional infrastructure of our cities, regions and towns for a more democratic, distributed great transition. Dark Matter work with institutions around the world, from UNDP (Global), McConnell (Canada), TFL, GLA (London) to Bloxhub (Copenhagen)
He has taught and lectured at various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin; Architectural Association, University College London, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and New School.
Chair: Sarah Mills
Sarah Mills is an architect and Head of Leeds School of Architecture at Leeds Beckett University. She has co-led the MArch design research unit ‘Cinematic Commons’ since 2013, engaging in international collaborations, exhibitions and research workshops (Mumbai, Mexico City, Tokyo, Marseille, London). Sarah’s research reconsiders future models of interdisciplinary practice and the relationship between architecture and film in challenging urban conditions.
