Keith Clarke delivers 'Don't be nice, be effective!' lecture
On 2 November 2011, Keith Clarke delivered the inaugural Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering Biennial Lecture on Sustainability and Ethics in the Design of our Built Environment. It was entitled 'Don't be nice, be effective!'. It also fell under the auspices of the Ways of Thinking Lecture Series across all Graduate Schools in the University.
Keith was educated as an architect, and has worked as an architect, an engineer, a client and a developer. He has worked for the City of New York, he has headed up the largest UK engineering consultancy (Atkins) and he has chaired the Construction Industry Council. His passion is sustainability in the built environment, and his talk focused on this.
He used recent press cuttings to help make his point that we need to be brave in our design ambition, and not fear hindsight-defined failure. He did not refer to his own extraordinary design contributions, but chose instead to focus on what designers of the future will need to consider. It was inspirational, conversational and extremely informative.
Professor Tim Ibell, Head of the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering and Head of the Engineering and Design Graduate School added 'Keith is a true world leader in low-carbon design, and his talk demonstrated this profoundly. Feedback from this lecture has been terrific. It was a must-see.'
Professor Jane Millar, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, gave the vote of thanks, and handed over a memento to Keith in recognition of his excellent presentation.
