BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk// X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Taking Stock: Methods for Built Environment Research - Nick Baker\ , Alan Blackwell\, Paul Chamberlain\, Robert Evans\, Wybo Houkes\, Michael Pollitt DTSTART:20100430T080000Z DTEND:20100430T160000Z UID:TALK24321@talks.cam.ac.uk CONTACT:Scott Kelly DESCRIPTION:*Thursday 29th April* *_5:30pm - 7:00pm:_* Pecha Kucha 4CMR wi ne and cheese evening\n\n*Friday 30th April* *_9:00am - 5:00pm:_* Taking S tock: Conference\n\n_Please visit the conference website for registration and further details:_\n\n_*www.greenbridge.org.uk_*\n\n*Wondering how othe rs investigate the built environment?*\n\n*Curious about what other discip lines' methods can offer?*\n\n\n\n\n*This conference is a platform for pos tgraduate researchers to exchange their research methodologies relating to the built environment and discover some of the incredible variety of meth ods practised by senior academics in disciplines from business to architec ture to interdisciplinary design at the computer labs.*\n\n*Taking Stock w ill focus on expanding traditional disciplinary boundaries to produce rich and robust research methodology suites and to help foster a lasting netwo rk of Cambridge built environment researchers.*\n\n*Dr Nick Baker*\n\n*_Ab stract: Waste: culture or instinct\; a new subject for research?_*\n\nIn s pite of the widespread acceptance of the growing crisis in balancing the e nergy supply and demand equation\, the weight of scientific research is di rected towards supply. On the face of it\, the demand side is almost trivi al – turn off lights\, insulate buildings\, don’t install air-conditio ning etc etc. Yet in spite of knowing these simple measures\, our demand g rows ever larger. There seems to be an underlying belief that\, in an idea l world\, consuming more is better and demand must always be met.\n\nIn st udying the specific field of energy-consuming behaviour in the occupation and operation of buildings\, we have observed that people are not only inf luenced by actual outcomes\, but by their perception of outcomes\, even if they don’t experience them or they are actually incorrect. If there exi sts a deep-seated perception that the consumption of more will always be b etter\, it stands to reason that arguments to the contrary will probably b e ineffective.\n\nOur reading of buildings is poor\; after all we are new (in evolutionary terms) to living indoors\, and our intuitive responses th at were developed in a different and more dangerous environment have not y et adjusted. This talk is concerned with how interdisciplinary scientific study may help us compensate for this\, in building design\, system design and education.\n\n\n*Dr Alan Blackwell*\n\nBiography and abstract coming soon!\n\n\n*Professor Paul Chamberlain*\n\nProfessor Paul Chamberlain is a graduate from the Royal College of Art and is currently the Director of L ab4living and Head of the Art and Design Research Centre at Sheffield Hall am University. His work has gained international recognition through exhib ition\, publication and awards. He explores the role of artefacts in multi -disciplinary\, human-centred research. He engages in design research wher e his design activity is used as tool to develop understanding as well as more traditionally to develop solutions to problems. Paul works with diver se academic specialists and commercial partners with the objective of real ising new knowledge that informs and is demonstrated in commercial outputs . Paul explores the multi-sensory aspects of design\, particularly within healthcare\, disability and ageing. This includes investigations into educ ational and therapeutic environments\, furniture and medical devices. His work has been instrumental in the creation of Lab4Living\, a collaborative research initiative between the Art and Design and Health and Social Care Research Centres.\n\n*_Abstract: Building partnerships_*\n\nLab4Living is an exciting collaboration between the Art and Design and Health and Socia l Care Research Centres at Sheffield Hallam University and users\, consume rs or customers. This creative partnership brings together research expert ise spanning the fields of health\, rehabilitation\, design\, engineering\ , ergonomics and user-led design that is currently applied in an investiga tion titled "Future Bathroom"\, a three year EPSRC funded project.\n\nThe need for user engagement in the design process is particularly acute where the target user group have specific requirements\, which may not be fully appreciated by designers. Designing to support older\, disabled living is one such problem. The bathroom provides a number of challenges to user-ce ntred design methodology because of the highly personal\, sensitive and in timate nature of the activities that take place there. Our challenge to ‘co-design’ has been to provide an environment and process where innov ative exchange of ideas between stakeholders can take place. Training olde r people to talk with other older people has helped to overcome the diffic ulties that individuals can experience when talking about personal activit ies. Our goal has been to foster what Manzini has referred to as a ‘crea tive community’\, drawing upon the body of expertise that exists within our group\, project partners and those with whom we have engaged during th e undertaking of this project.\n\n\n*Robert Evans*\n\nRobert Evans is a Re ader in Sociology at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences and specialises in Science and Technology Studies (STS). He has worked on projects involv ing economic forecasting\, sustainable cities and genomics. Most recently he has been working on the nature of expertise. He is co-author\, with Har ry Collins\, of the much-cited ‘Third Wave of Science Studies’ (Social Studies of Science\, 2002\, 32(2): 235-96) and the more recent Rethinking Expertise (The University of Chicago Press\, 2007).\n\n*_Interdisciplinar ity in sustainable city research:_*\n\nResearching cities is invariably an d interdisciplinary activity\, but what does interdisciplinarity mean in p ractice? Is the intention that the coming together of different academic d isciplines creates a new discipline of 'sustainability science' or is the goal the more modest one that researchers from different disciplines learn to understand the perspectives\, techniques and ways of seeing that other s have come to take for granted. In this talk\, I explore these different modes of collaboration and focus in particular on the idea of interactiona l expertise – i.e. expertise in the language of a discipline rather than in its practice – as one way of understanding what is required for succ essful interdisciplinary collaboration. Drawing on sustainable city resear ch I will outline the ways in which recognising the importance of interact ional expertise helps diagnose the problems of doing and using sustainable city research. I finish by asking how\, if at all\, the interactional exp ertise needed to bind a community of sustainability researchers can be def ined.\n\n\n*Dr. Wybo Houkes*\n\nWybo Houkes is Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Science and Technology at the School of Innovation Sciences\ , Eindhoven University of Technology. His research concerns design\, use a nd the functions of technical artefacts. He currently directs two research programmes: “Darwinism in the Man-Made World”\, about evolutionary ap proaches to technology\, and “Things that Make Us Smart”\, about cogni tive artefacts and the extended-mind hypothesis. He is the author of Techn ical Functions (with Pieter Vermaas)\, to be published by Springer in Apri l 2010\, and associate editor of the Handbook of Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Science (Elsevier\, 2009).\n\n*_Building plans and reconst ructing use_*\n\nI will first introduce use-plan analysis\, developed toge ther with Pieter Vermaas. This analysis is a philosophical reconstruction of design\, use and various other artefact-related actions as goal-directe d actions in which plans are produced\, communicated and/or executed. Desi gn primarily leads to a use plan\, communicated to users\; and sometimes a nd secondarily to a material object that may be used in executing the plan . I defend this analysis from charges that it is unrealistic\, and argue t hat its main advantage is that the ‘non-material’ product of design\, which affects user behaviour\, is a determinate item (a plan) that is amen able to standards of rationality.\n\nThe resulting philosophy of design\, use and technical artefacts may be called minimal instrumentalism: it hold s that\, whatever else they may be\, design and use are aimed at efficient realization of goals\; and that artefacts are functional material support s in this goal-realization. I show briefly how values such as safety and s ustainability\, and social conditions may be incorporated.\n\nFinally\, I explore the relevance of this analysis for research regarding (use and des ign of) the built environment\, and indicate its main limitations.\n\n\n*D r. Michael Pollitt*\n\nMichael Pollitt is a Reader in Business Economics a t Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. He is also an Assi stant Director of the Electricity Policy Research Group (EPRG) and Fellow and Director of Studies in Economics and Management at Sidney Sussex Colle ge. In 2007 he was appointed Economic Advisor to Ofgem\, the UK's Energy r egulator. He is the author of 40 referred journal articles and is the (co- )author/co-editor of 8 books\, including Delivering the Low Carbon Electri city System (CUP\, 2008).\n\n*_Electricity demand through the lens of beha vioural economics_*\n\nThis talk will outline some of the research being u ndertaken at the EPRG in the light of recent government policy towards the demand side of the electricity system. I will outline work on behavioural economics using electricity meter data from Northern Ireland which sheds light on the extent to which household consumers behave rationally in maki ng energy purchasing decisions. I will also discuss the way in which socia l capital methodologies can be used to look at the commitment of companies towards energy conservation and climate change mitigation\, focusing on r ecent work on High Street Retailers in the UK.\n\n*_Proudly supported by:_ *\n\n!http://groups.pwf.cam.ac.uk/GreenBr/images/crassh-logo-100px.gif !\n !http://groups.pwf.cam.ac.uk/GreenBr/images/4cmr-logo-100px.jpg! LOCATION:CRASSH Seminar Room 17 Mill Lane END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR