It was a real treat to introduce the public lecture from Amanda Sturgeon as part of the UK Living Building Collaborative launch at the Interface showroom in London last night.

Here are my introduction notes …

Good evening and a warm welcome to Living Building Challenge UK

Firstly a huge thank you to Interface, Kelly Grainger for hosting this evening and Claire Bowles at Green Vision for making it happen, and of  course Amanda Sturgeon from Living Building.

I and a few others have waited a long time for this …

As you may have read in Hattie Hartmans AJ article, our awareness with Living Building started via twitter and through twitter dialogues during the Living Futures conference in Portland in 2011

Later that same year I was privileged to have a guided tour of the CIRS building in Vancouver, during the week before completion (The CIRS building is one of the few buildings scheduled for LBC certification) Since then we have received Living Building related remote presentations live into Green Vision and Be2camp events.

Over the last few months we, that’s myself and Claire at Green Vision, have held regular Skype chats with Amanda and others at LBC, to set up this UK Collaborative and this event, so it’s a real pleasure to welcome Amanda along this evening

But before introducing Amanda a word about the Living Building UK Collaborative. We are part of the Green Vision / Leeds Sustainability Institute with two main aims:

One of advocacy to increase awareness and understanding of the Living Building Challenge

Secondly to provide support to clients for living building design, construction and certification in line with the challenging Living Building principles.

If you want to know more about the collaborative, would like to get involved or indeed would like support on possible future Living Building projects here in the UK please do get in touch.

We cannot let this evening pass without mentioning Mel Starrs, and her advocacy for deep green thinking. Mel, in her last blog piece (an article which you must read) welcomed the idea of LBC in the UK as a standard worthy of the green credentials of leading clients.

Mel’s blog was read by Su Butcher.

I am sure you will agree – launching the LBC here in the UK is in fitting honour for Mels passion for sustainability, green building and challenging standards.

Amanda – Vice President Living Building Challenge

Amanda is an award winning architect recognised as a pioneering leader in the green building movement in the US northwest, a founding member of the Cascadia Green Building Council and is a visiting professor at the University of Washington

Amanda was awarded with better bricks Architect Award in 2008 and recently gained Fellowship of the AIA, the American Insitute of Architects

…

Amanda, welcome to London and the UK Collaborative

The event was well tweeted, to catch up on comments and pictures view the #lbcuk and #uklbc hashtags (don’t ask) and follow @UK_LBC.

Record of the evening now on Storify

There will be a Slideshare record very soon

Image Building Pieces