Tuesday 22nd October, 7pm at the Building Centre
The first Architect's Climate Action Network, ACAN, Architects Assembly will be at the Building Centre on 22nd October. This is a chance to have your say on where we should collectively focus our effort. What areas of policy do you think need to be changed? What is the low-hanging-fruit we can tackle quickly? ACAN is setting up a proactive forum, and invites you to join our discussions on where to direct our initial campaigns/ actions. ACAN’s decisions are made democratically and quickly.
Speakers:
Farhana Yamin: Founder and CEO of Track 0, leading international environmental lawyer and climate change and development policy expert.
Clara Bagenal George: Sustainability specialist, Mayor's Design Advocate and London Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI) Champion
The newly established Architect's Climate Action Network, ACAN, is harnessing the power of individuals within the profession to achieve systemic change.
What is ACAN?
ACAN is a climate activism group, a growing network of individuals and organisations. ACAN campaigns for legislation and policy change from the top-down as well as equipping ourselves, the workforce, with the information and resources to combat the climate emergency from the bottom up.
ACAN was formed in the context of the recent global climate protests and unprecedented public concern for the environment. It was born out of a common acknowledgement that the built environment is a major contributing factor in the climate emergency and that our professions are not acting with anything close to the urgency required. The RIBA's recent climate declaration is a step in the right direction but meeting the government’s international commitments and legally-binding climate targets clearly requires complete and rapid transformation of our profession.
What are our main aims?
- Transformation of the regulatory, economic and cultural conditions in which our built environment is made, operated and renewed, in order to decarbonise as soon as possible.
- To catalyse the adoption of regenerative, ecological principles in order to green the built environment and assist with the recovery and restoration of natural ecosystems.
- To reform the culture and practices of our profession to assist with this transformation.
ACAN is made up of individuals rather than practices or professional bodies. This means that ACAN is able to act at speed, without conflict of interest, and it open to methods that may be unavailable to other campaign organisations. We know we’re not the first group to advocate urgent, radical change to built environment policy and we recognise the enormous value of work that is already being done by others. But through a lack of communication and collective action the full potential of the workforce is not being realised.
The network recognises the agency that individuals can find through collective action. The necessity for active participation and a willingness to speak and act out – an activist mentality – is felt by ACAN to be a measured response to the current situation and one lacking in the architectural field.
We are architects, designers, planners, engineers and anyone that shares in this vision for change. Please sign up, join us and help make the change.
@ArchitectsCAN
