So lovely to see so many familiar faces at FOOTPRINT+ and meet quite a few new ones too.

So many talks clashes (and getting caught up in long overdue catchups on the sunny terrace!) which meant I missed some amazing speakers. Have a bit of FOMO to miss day 2 (and to not have been able to stay for too much of the fun after!). Some takeaways from what I did see:

Really good to see retrofit shining through with consensus for this being a clear and necessary solution, with huge turnouts for talks on that stage standing room only.

Talks on Timber, stone and regenerative materials also hugely popular and being discussed with increasing nuance which is great to see. The Stone Collective new book made for fabulously informative (pumping-on-the-bog) reading and I'm feeling inspired by WYSWYG / Architecture approach to stone architecture. Any invites to meet some of your unloved stones at quarry sites in South of France/Italy/Spain would be warmly received.

On the whole, it was great to see the conversation staying alive and with strong case studies and new hopeful solutions increasingly emerging. I just hope that enthusiasm for tackling the climate and biodiversity crisis is not waning outside conference arenas (I fear it is, but maybe this is because I have been away from the architecture world and only see the limited coverage it gets in the news). Especially with the reality that implementing a fully sustainable, and increasingly regenerative, built environment is indeed hard work still, despite years of trying. And perhaps harder than ever in some respects, despite the knowledge we have, with a context of international conflicts, economic conditions, regulatory changes and a tendency to prefer tried and tested construction methods in the mainstream.

I hope that in hearing 'we have all the answers' people don't hyperfocus on those answers that are easiest to achieve and avoid tackling head on the trickier aspects. The intro to the Cundall Adaptation Risk talk at the end of the day was a sobering reminder of the likely climate risks the built environment will need to be adapted for. While the discussion that followed was insurance/finance oriented there will indeed be physical implications for architects and built environment practitioners to consider very seriously indeed. I hope in future to see more architects and designers talking about long term resilience alongside short term design needs.

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By Kat Scott

dRMM Architects