EIP Green recently attended the Bristol Dynamics Designs Lecture held at the Faculty of Engineering at Bristol University. The event celebrated the visit to Bristol of a team of prize-winning Chinese engineers.
Last autumn the British Council launched a design competition at the Shanghai Expo to design a hospital building for an earthquake zone. The overall winners were Team of Legend, a group of six engineering students from Southwest Jiaotong University, in Chengdu. Their win was fitting; Chengdu suffered badly from a major earthquake in 2008. Part of their prize was a week-long masterclass in sustainable engineering at Bristol University.
At the event, Team of Legend described their winning design and explained what they had learnt during their visit. It was encouraging to see the team’s enthusiasm for sustainable practices and the hope is that they will apply them in their future careers.
Team of Legend’s talk was followed by a presentation from Peter Head, a consultant with Arup, chairman of the Institute for Sustainability and CEO of the Ecological Sequestration Trust. Peter described the need for a transition to an Ecological Age, a model for global development that applies across countries of all incomes. He had some particularly inventive solutions for urban development, spoke on the need to embrace bio-mimicry and stressed how engineers and planners need to view rural and urban environments as a closed system. He cited the example of Seoul, Korea where Lee Myung-bak removed the freeway that had been built above the Cheonggyecheon River. This not only reduced traffic and pollution but created an urban park and opened up access to the city centre.
Peter’s talk set out the challenges faced by the world. The hope is that engineers like those of Team of Legend can take the brave steps needed to address these challenges.