Press releases
'Sustainability kills'
publication date: 14 October 2005
says Battle of Ideas speaker, Austin Williams, the director of the Future Cities Project, an independent think-tank that examines the direction of urban policy and architecture in the UK
'If sustainability goes unchallenged,' says Austin Williams, director of the Future Cities Project, 'it will kill aspiration, strangle experimentation at birth, murder the concept of progress, and end up suffocating humanity.'
Speaking at a lunchtime seminar at the Battle of Ideas conference on Sunday, 30th October, he will condemn the current tendency to prioritise nature over the needs of ordinary people.
Paul Hyett, author, journalist and past-president of the Royal Institute of British Architects will attempt to rebut these charges, in the company of Henry Oliver, head of policy at the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England and Pascale Scheurer, head of sustainability at the double-Stirling Prize-winning architects, Wilkinson Eyre.
Williams is looking forward to the challenge. 'Bring on the sustainability industry,' he says. 'I will show them that their moral posturing will result in thousands without homes; millions under-developed; billions spent on the wrong things; and absolutely everyone – but the sustainability zealots, that is – being blamed.'
For more details of the event, please go to cafe conversations
NOTES TO EDITORS:
1. Austin Williams is the director of the Future Cities Project and technical editor of the Architects’ Journal where his weekly column regularly addresses development issues. Contact: 020 7505 6711 or 07957 534909.
2. Austin Williams is presenting “Sustainability: the architecture of low horizons” at the Battle of Ideas, a two-day conference at the Royal College of Art, Kensington, south London on October 29th and 30th. For more details visit www.BattleofIdeas.co.uk
3. The Future Cities Project’s national survey “Attitudes to the City: Bingeing On Anti-Social Behaviour” – which explores the real perceptions and problems of urban living and compares and contrasts them to government policy – will be released on October 26th. For more details contact: mail@futurecites.org.uk
4. The Future of Community festival, a one-day event supported by Central St Martins School, Holborn, London, will be held on March 4th 2006. Visit: www.futurecities.org.uk/events.htm