Transforming our cities from grey to green

It was great to see the launch of the Integrated Habitats Design Competition last week – a competition that seeks out inspiring and innovative designers who emphasise the value of biodiversity and nature in our built surroundings. A competition that places significant weight on nature contributing to healthy, low-energy, high-quality environments will hopefully help the spread and uptake of best practice in greening our cities.

Integrated design and a greater focus on green infrastructure is not just the domain of planners, the owners of allotments or the managers of our very important inner city parks. Access to high quality green space, the provision of native trees for solar shading, designing building solutions to support threatened species, or the application of sustainable drainage systems do not just help conserve or enhance local ecology - they are also vital to our health and wellbeing (and happiness). They are also vital for the long-term resilience of urban areas in the face of over-heating or flooding associated with climate change. Convinced of this, I’m very happy to support and endorse this new design competition and look forward to evaluating the submissions with my fellow judges during the summer!

The competition was launched at Ecobuild last week (see Jonathon Porritt’s blog), and it was great to see this event really gathering momentum, and size. For me, Ecobuild highlighted the need for our designers and builders to put nature before technological fixes. I was privy to discussions and debates around biomimicry, the provision of food growing space in schools, and planning for more trees in our cities. But I was also impressed by the drive and enthusiasm of the many professionals trying to deliver more sustainable homes, schools, hospitals, offices, and other forms of infrastructure. There were literally hundreds of suppliers showing off their latest green products – from natural paints and SMART meters, to micro-CHP units and recycled benches.

Please visit www.ihdc.org.uk for further information on the Integrated Habitats Design Competition. The competition is supported by CIRIA and organised by Dusty Gedge, the UK’s leading living roofs expert, Gary Grant, one of the UK’s leading ecologists, and RESET, the sustainable design training charity. Judges and endorsers come a wide range of backgrounds, including government agencies, professional institutions and NGOs.

Participants have until 30th June to enter and finalists will exhibit at the Building Centre in central London for five weeks over September, during which time the final awards will be presented at the World Green Roof Congress on the 15th September.