Recasting the Built Environment
Recasting the Built Environment
The Built Environment can be such a frustrating term. In the shorthand required for small talk, it encompasses property, architecture, planning, construction, development, public policy, economics, infrastructure, and so much more.
These are the terms we use to try to simplify the ‘sector’ and make it more immediately understandable, but in doing so we can miss the inter-relations between different parts of the industry, the complexities of what is happening on the ground, and even how human behaviours can disrupt the best laid plans.
A group of residents is suing Washington, D.C. for gentrification. The mayor of London was one of the keynote speakers of the world’s largest festival for culture, media and technology. A technology giant has taken on Toronto’s most notable redevelopment project.
Across the globe, the silos within city-building, governance and citizenship – if they ever truly existed – are being ignored or just plain torn down, giving rise to new forms of urban organization and exchange.
As the leading communications agency for the built environment, we aim to navigate this complexity, bringing together diverse actors from across the industry to help them thrive in a connected world.
This is what animates us and drives us onwards –working always to unravel complexity and deliver clarity.
To celebrate, interrogate and deepen our understanding of this world, we have launched our first publication: a series of essays and interviews on the built environment.
Assembling a diverse array of writers, thinkers, designers, artists, journalists, musicians, photographers, consultants, politicians, and innovators, the essays explore how communication in its myriad forms is shaping our world.
From the connections between sports, places and culture to the music of airports; from how techno helped reshape Detroit, to the lessons learned from past efforts to regenerate of some of Britain’s poorest communities, the publication examines, restlessly, curiously, how the stories that are told and the messages that are communicated shape our places and cities.
We hope our book will inspire and provoke and challenge – but also give pause for reflection. The common thread is a dive into storytelling, one that should also serve as a call to action. How can we recast ‘the built environment’ to become a more expansive term? What are the opportunities and responsibilities when we seek to create ‘places’? And to whom should we be looking for help?
If you would like a copy of Inspiration | Provocation: Essays on the Blurred Edges of the Built Environment please email publication@ing-media.com
“We can miss the inter-relations between different parts of the industry, the complexities of what is happening on the ground, and even how human behaviours can disrupt the best laid plans.”