Tom Holbrook will be speaking at this year's RTPI's Young Planners’ Conference, which will be in Cambridge this year, with the title 'Connecting Town and Country'.

Tom will be part of a panel on 11 October, discussing Growth and the natural environment: examining the tensions between aspirations for growth and the natural infrastructure we need to address biodiversity collapse and the climate crisis.

Tom will be joined by John Cornell, Natural Environment Team Leader at Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Services, Mark Hodgson, Director at Savills and Alex Shattock, a Barrister at Landmark Chambers.

More on the conference here.

#YPConf2024

5th Studio is pleased to support the release of North Sea Rising: A Case for Water-Based Commons, co-edited by Nabi Agzamov – a doctoral researcher based at 5th Studio, as part of his ongoing research.

North Sea Rising features a series of essays by experts and practitioners examining the evolution, climate change challenges, and the future potential of the North Sea watershed. Essays include Tom Holbrook's A New Hansa? Emerging Spatial Challenges in the North Sea Region, which explores the historical and present-day significance of the region's trade and urban networks. It underscores the importance of the North Sea's history of innovation and unique geography, suggesting that these elements can once again inspire new ideas in urban planning, governance, and environmental stewardship. Di Fang's Mapping the Human-Ocean Nexus: Reflections and Reimaginings in the Cartography of Land Reclamation and Nashin Mahtani's To Dream Like a River: Wet Politics for Turbulent Worlds. The book concludes with North Sea Manifesting by Nabi Agzamov and Francesca Vanelli, which proposes a fluid, inclusive governance model that balances ecological and social dimensions, envisioning a resilient and equitable future for the North Sea.

This book is published as an output of VI PER Gallery's writing grant within the LINA (Learning, Interacting, and Networking in Architecture) platform.

Supported by the Ministry of Culture Czech Republic, City of Prague and State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic.

This research is conducted under the REDI Program, a project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 101034328.

5th Studio is an industry host to the REDI (RMIT European Doctoral Innovators) program, a global €9 million doctoral training initiative funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions scheme.

This paper reflects only the author's view and the Research Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Tom Holbrook will be discussing 5th Studio's ongoing work in cities and landscape in RMIT's forthcoming webinar – The Future is Landscape.

The European Commission's €750B recovery plan to kick-start the economy and to invest in a long-term future for Europe prioritises the green and digital transition that Europe needs. ​

The commitment to a green recovery and a healthy environment has brought into focus the importance of our buildings and the impact they have on people’s lives. Homes, schools, hospitals and office buildings suffered the effects of the pandemic and had to be re-adjusted to the new reality.​

This presents a unique opportunity to rethink, redesign and modernise Europe’s buildings and urban landscapes to meet the demands of a greener and digital society.​

RMIT's Global Webinar brings together leading academics, designers, policy makers, industry leaders and practitioners to explore and discuss the crucial role of the built environment in creating a greener and more sustainable future.

More details here.

Tom will be contributing to a webinar on the UK Innovation Corridor at Real Estate Live 11.00am, Wednesday 7th October 2020.

The session will be chaired by Helen Crane, property editor, City AM, and will feature Monika Jain, Principal City Planner at Transport for London and Professor Greg Clark, Global advisor on future cities.

This year has been one of upheaval – and it has changed our outlook on life, work, and leisure, and on how we move between those parts of our lives.

Do the changes in the housing, labour, and transport markets offer a new set of opportunities for the places in the UK Innovation Corridor? Can there be a new mix of functions and activity in places like Harlow, Stevenage the Upper Lee Valley and towns close to Cambridge? Could there be a hybrid model in which we can find a new paradigm for our towns and cities?

Sign up here.

As part of New London Architecture's focus on London's Royal Docks, Tom Holbrook will chair a panel of experts on public realm and inclusivity to find out ways we can ensure our public spaces are fit for all.

The Royal Docks is providing a range of unique opportunities for London across Public Realm, Transport, Culture, Communities and the Economy. At this extraordinary moment as we struggle through a period of social unrest and the impacts of lockdown on our City, how can areas like the Royal Docks help to champion innovation? How can the built environment sector contribute to more democratised public space? And what is the role of public realm in equalising opportunity?

The panel will feature:

Daniel Bridge, Programme Director, Royal Docks

Maria Adebowale-Schwarte, CEO, Foundation for Future London

David Ogunmuyiwa, Partner, ArchitectureDoingPlace

Bridget Snaith, Senior Lecturer Landscape Architecture, University of East London

Fahmida Rahman, Research and Policy Analyst, Resolution Foundation and Commissioner, Newham Democracy and Civic Participation Commission

Wednesday 15 July 2020

14:00 - 15:00

Book here.

Greater Berlin will be 100 years old this year, an occasion marked by a public exhibition at the Kronprinzenpalais, Berlin Mitte.

Over the past 100 years Metropolitan Berlin has changed and reinvented itself under a variety of influences. Exhibition themes include diversity of centres, planning, housing, transport, sustainability and major projects. A key focus of the exhibition will be a comparison with the peer cities of Moscow, Vienna, Paris and London.

The London contribution will illustrate key topics and projects shaping London and will feature two 5th Studio projects: The Crossrail Atlas (2010), and ongoing work on the Royal Docks.

The Mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller, is the lead patron; the main curator is Professor Harald Bodenschatz. The initiator is Berlin 2020, which is part of the Architekten und Ingenieurverein zu Berlin e.V. AIV in cooperation with the Architekturmuseum of the Technical University Berlin.

More on the exhibition here.

Our work on the New Cross Area Framework has been shortlisted for the Planning Awards 2020.

The Framework – jointly commissioned by the London Borough of Lewisham, the Greater London Authority and Transport for London – has been shortlisted in the Award for plan-making category. More details of the project are available here.

The Planning Awards reward excellence in professional planning work. The awards presentation will take place on 24 September 2020 at The Mermaid London – more details here. The New Cross Area Framework won the New London Award last year in the Masterplans and Area Frameworks category.

5th Studio’s work for the National Infrastructure Commission on the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge Arc illustrates the potential of well-planned and integrated growth around infrastructure. There is much work to do to develop this thinking, particularly around the potential for net-zero carbon and the creation of new landscapes to support sustainable growth.

Cranfield University, in association with the Arc Universities Group and the UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities is hosting a one and a half day conference on June 4th-5th on ‘Science and Innovation for the Arc’. The event will both give a voice to a selection of perspectives on delivering the promise of the Arc and showcase leading edge research aligned with the four policy pillars of Connectivity, Place Making, Productivity, and Environment.

Tom Holbrook will be speaking on the opportunity of creating well-designed places in the Arc on 4th June. Other speakers include Sir Anthony Seldon, Vice-Chancellor, University of Buckingham, Liz Varga Professor of Complex Systems at UCL and Will Hutton, Principal of Hertford College, Oxford.

https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/events/events-2020/science-and-innovation-for-the-arc

As part of the Mayor of London’s Good Growth by Design programme, Designing a City for All Londoners is an event to celebrate the programme and its first term of activities. It will also be an opportunity to show the work to date on draft guidance for two important policies – ‘Good Quality Housing for all Londoners’ - new housing design guidance, which embeds quality at the centre of housing delivery, and the Public London Charter, which sets out new principles for the rights and responsibilities of the owners, managers and users of public spaces.

Tom Holbrook will be chairing a session on the Public London Charter, with a panel including Paul Harper from the GLA, Anisha Jogani, Placemaking Lead at LB Croydon, Professor Antonia Layard, Professor of Law, University of Bristol, Manijeh Verghese, Curator British pavilion Venice architecture biennale 2020 and Martyn Evans from developer U+I.

Compered by Sadie Morgan OBE, the event will celebrate the Good Growth by Design programme and progress made across a range of priority areas like circular economy, child-friendly cities and high streets. This work has all been summarised in a new compendium, edited by MDA Rory Hyde. The event will bring together local authorities, built environment experts, the planning sector and a public and civil society audience to showcase and recognise the role of design in improving development and delivering quality of life in a growing city.

#GoodGrowthbyDesign

Find out more about Good Growth by Design here. @MayorofLondon / @LDN_gov

A talk by Tom Holbrook on 5th Studio's approach to working in cities, originally produced for RMIT University's Masters in Urban Design programme, Melbourne, Australia.

Tom flags the importance of synthetic design thinking in addressing complexity and change, and asks ‘what if architects became activists for their cities and towns?'

This Friday 20th September 5th Studio will be participating in the Global Climate Strike.

5th Studio is a signatory to Architects Declare and as a practice we seek to raise awareness of the climate emergency and the urgent need for action amongst our clients and supply chains.

We therefore support the Global Climate Strike and we will be using the day in a variety of ways to understand how we can improve our contribution to addressing the emergency and foreground affirmative action.

globalclimatestrike.net

Tom Holbrook will be speaking at the forthcoming ’Transforming Peripheries’ Urban Land Conference in Ulm, Germany in September.

A large segment of Europe’s population lives outside the traditional city: in towns, in suburbia or on the urban fringes. To date this territory has not received the attention it deserves (see for example our provocation here).

The conference - organised by the Institute for Architecture and Urbanism at Biberach University - will investigate strategies for shaping these marginal territories, with input from policy makers, urban designers, business leaders, academics and community groups. Other speakers include AWB’s Joachim Declerck (Brussels), Interboro’s Georgeen Theodore (Brooklyn, USA) and Christian Schmid from ETH’s Future Cities Laboratory (Zurich).

The conference is on the 26 September 2019 - more details and registration here:

http://www.interboropartners.com

http://www.architectureworkroom.eu

http://www.fcl.ethz.ch/about-us.html

5th Studio is featured in the New London 2019/2020 - Best Buildings and Projects exhibition at the Building Centre London until Friday the 1st of November. The exhibition features a collection of the newest and most significant projects in London, selected for the New London Awards 2019. The New London Awards is London’s annual celebration of the best architecture, planning and construction projects that contribute to the capital’s wider social and economic wellbeing, supported by the Mayor of London.

5th Studio's featured project is our New Cross Area Strategy which was the winner of the Area Strategy category at the New London Awards 2019. Focused on a 1km area around New Cross gate station, this is a vision to maximise the benefit of infrastructure investment associated with the Bakerloo line extension to support Good Growth. Establishing an evidence base that allows insight into the life of New Cross, its economy and its built environment, the study identifies how those can be reinforced and improved through smaller projects. It will be used by the London Borough of Lewisham, Transport for London and the Greater London Authority to inform the Lewisham Local Plan and the design of new Bakerloo line infrastructure. More information about the New Cross Area Framework is available on the project page here.

More information about the exhibition can be found here.

On 23rd May associate February Phillips took part in the Panel discussion at the Cambridge Associate of Architects annual event, alongside Prof Wendy Pullan, head of Cambridge University Department of Architecture, and Colin Brown, chair of the Cambridge Forum for the Construction Industry.

The evening was a huge success with stimulating and provocative discussion on current and potential future issues surrounding the Greater Cambridge area as well as a celebration of 30 years of the Cambridge Architecture Gazette.

5th Studio's work will be included in the forthcoming exhibition Occupied, at the the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology later this year.

The exhibition will bring together local and international practitioners to showcase proposals that anticipate the critical design approaches, ideas and strategies of the imminent future.

More information can be found here.

5th Studio's Tom Holbrook will be presenting the practice's investigations into the subject of the 'Entrepreneurial City' in his lecture at the Politecnico Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban studies. The lecture will take place on Tuesday 3rd May at 18:30 in Aula Gamma.

The London School of Architecture’s monthly Show and Tell asks leading figures to give an insight in to how they design. On Tuesday 20 October, 5th Studio’s Tom Holbrook joins architect and urbanist Deborah Saunt (DSDHA) and planner David West (Studio Egret West) to discuss the crafting of cities. The session will be chaired by London School of Architecture Director Will Hunter: See more here

This event, on September 5th, will bring together writers, historians, architects and economists to discuss the development of London’s periphery. Doughnut will be the first event of its kind – an adventurous celebration of all things Outer London and a critical reflection on the rapid transformation that the city’s periphery is currently experiencing.

Tom Holbrook will join Will Self, Hanif Kureishi, Gillian Darley, Ken Worpole, Ellis Woodman and Dutch historians Crimson Wouter & Michelle Provost among other speakers. Outside, businesses and artists from London’s periphery will be manning pop-up food stalls and staging music performances. This collaboration between the Architecture Foundation and the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich promises a great day out!

Tickets & further information available here