Biomimicry in design

Greengaged at the Design Council brings together designers, thinkers, doers and makers for a week of talks and interactive events. I'll be speaking there with colleagues Michael Pawlyn from Exploration Architecture, Julian Vincent, Melissa Sterry and others for a day on 'Biomimicry in Design'. Email the link at the start of the article to register for this free event.

In November, Melissa, Johnn Grant and I will be speaking at Salford University on biomimicry and eco-logical design for business and social change.

Next week, at the Do Lectures, Michael Pawlyn will be joined by Tim Birkhead (the Wisdom of Birds) and 20 other top speakers for four days of theb best talks anywhere. Half a dozen tickets are left...

The Richest Room on Earth

A space deep beneath the ground, surrounded by metre-thick concrete walls. Airtight vault doors with electronic passwords protect access, with further heavy steel doors inside. Protective clothing is essential for access to the Richest Room on Earth.

The room is 50 square metres at minus 20c - a space that contains the seeds of 25,000 plant species. It’s humbling to share space with the richest biodiversity on the planet. Kew have a billion seeds in their care and have systems in place to protect them for a couple of thousand years. Maybe then, civilisation will know how to look after them in a restored natural environment.

Fellow Doer Giles Hutchings had invited me to spend the day at Wakehurst in Sussex, meeting the custodians of the Millennium Seed Bank, the impressive, knowledgeable and passionate botanists and scientists on a mission to collect and preserve for the future, seed samples from 25% of the plants on the planet. It’s a job of importance beyond words, with a ‘business as usual’ path that’s pointing towards the loss of half of life on earth by the end of the century. Careless.

Waking people to take action and reverse at least some biodiversity loss is going to take some doing. Doing like running Do Lectures next year at Kew Gardens, Eden and the Garden of Wales, and engaging hundreds of thousands, and a million or two more, on a journey of change a . Drop a line if you want to play and get involved. There’s a lot to Do.

Do Lectures - speakers confirmed

All 20 speakers for September's Do Lectures are now confirmed and slotted into the timetable, which is excellent as we can now concentrate on selling the last 40 tickets to indicidual and corporate attendees. If the mix of people has a chemistry that's even close to 2008, we'll have magnificent company as well as wonderful input from great speakers and thinkers.

24% and counting

Today was one of those days. Sat in a meeting with a couple of dozen people for 8 hours. Just as well it was a board meeting with my excellent colleagues at CCW, where one of the agenda points was to set a target the CO2 emissions reductions for the next three year. There was unanimous support for a 24% drop in the next three years, which is of the order that's needed across Wales, the UK and far beyond. Details to follow soon.