Zero Ambitions Podcast

We spoke to Tara Gbolade and Marianne Heaslip about how work towards demand reduction and healing our homes must be grounded in social justice. In what will be one of many conversations on these themes, we discuss the gender, race and class barriers within the construction industry, and explore ways that we can promote broader, truly diverse and representative design and construction teams.

Show Notes

Tara Gbolade is an architect, passivhouse designer and cofounder of Gbolade Design Studio, a design-led, community centred practice, focused on sustainable design. She is a member of the Architect’s Declare steering group, sits on a number of design panels and co-founded the Paradigm Network, an organisation that champions black and asian representation in the built environment: https://www.paradigmnetwork.co.uk 
 
Marianne Heaslip is an architect and expert in retrofit, low carbon design, building performance evaluation and participative design. She is an Associate Principle at URBED, works in collaboration with Carbon Coop and plays a key role in People Powered Retrofit, an organisation that exists to tackle many of the barriers homeowners face in commissioning retrofit work on their homes: https://retrofit.coop   
 
Our conversation started with a run-down of International Women’s day and the current state of the industry and went on to explore topics such as: how retrofit needs to be user-centred, solving complex problems by bringing broader voices to the table, and how we can learn from pioneers such as Wangari Maathai and Kate Raworth, who stepped outside and beyond their professions to have wide-ranging positive impacts. 
 
Tara and Marianne signposted lots of fantastic resources:
Book: Culture is Bad for You: Orian Brook, Dave O'Brien and Mark Taylor: https://thesociologicalreview.org/reviews/culture-is-bad-for-you-by-brook-obrien-and-taylor/
Book: Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking: Matthew Syed
Community Organisation: Homebaked Community Land Trust: https://homebaked.org.uk/ 
Training Organisation: B4Box: https://b4box.co.uk
 
Plus a few more post-podcast references:
Community Organisation: Arts Emergency: https://www.arts-emergency.org 
Book: Programmed Inequality: Mar Hicks: https://programmedinequality.com 
 
And don’t forget to check out: 
https://www.paradigmnetwork.co.uk 
https://retrofit.coop  
https://www.gboladedesignstudio.com
http://urbed.coop
https://carbon.coop 

What is Zero Ambitions Podcast?

Zero Ambitions is a podcast about sustainability and the built environment. There is no single solution to fixing the built environment, so we're talking our way through as much of it as we can.

We find interesting guests who know what they're talking about and speak with them about sustainability, good practice, and how to make a difference because the challenges are massive and the problems complex.

You can also find us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/91573716.

Hosted by Jeff Colley (Passive House Plus), Dan Hyde (Everything is User Experience) and Alex Blondin (Everything is User Experience).