Future Proof 2012 presents Paul Downton

Paul Downton is a prize-winning architect, writer, international speaker, green building pioneer and early advocate for action on climate change. With a doctorate in Environmental Studies and 30 years experience teaching architecture, Paul is an acknowledged world leader in sustainable city theory.

Architects conceive of their buildings as pure objects, unsullied by occupation. Ideal cities are imagined as static, finite, finished. But real buildings get mucked up. Real cities explode and sprawl, constantly growing, constantly falling apart. In the real world nothing stands still – even the climate is changing. The future is more than a little uncertain.

Somewhere between constrained design and the favelas there lies a way to pattern a future that works. The proof of that future pulses in the life of every neighbourhood, and the means to get there is by making urban fractals.

Talk is from 12 - 1pm.