Social Justice in Retrofit, with Tara Gbolade and Marianne Heaslip

Zero Ambitions Podcast

Tara Gbolade is an architect, passivhouse designer and cofounder of Gbolade Design Studio, a design-led, community centred practice, focused on sustainable design. She is a member of the Architect’s Declare steering group, sits on a number of design panels and co-founded the Paradigm Network, an organisation that champions black and asian representation in the built environment: https://www.paradigmnetwork.co.uk

Marianne Heaslip is an architect and expert in retrofit, low carbon design, building performance evaluation and participative design. She is an Associate Principle at URBED, works in collaboration with Carbon Coop and plays a key role in People Powered Retrofit, an organisation that exists to tackle many of the barriers homeowners face in commissioning retrofit work on their homes: https://retrofit.coop

Our conversation started with a run-down of International Women’s day and the current state of the industry and went on to explore topics such as: how retrofit needs to be user-centred, solving complex problems by bringing broader voices to the table, and how we can learn from pioneers such as Wangari Maathai and Kate Raworth, who stepped outside and beyond their professions to have wide-ranging positive impacts.

Tara and Marianne signposted lots of fantastic resources:

Book: Culture is Bad for You: Orian Brook, Dave O'Brien and Mark Taylor: https://thesociologicalreview.org/reviews/culture-is-bad-for-you-by-brook-obrien-and-taylor/

Book: Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking: Matthew Syed

Community Organisation: Homebaked Community Land Trust: https://homebaked.org.uk/

Training Organisation: B4Box: https://b4box.co.uk

Plus a few more post-podcast references:

Community Organisation: Arts Emergency: https://www.arts-emergency.org

Book: Programmed Inequality: Mar Hicks: https://programmedinequality.com

And don’t forget to check out:

https://www.paradigmnetwork.co.uk

https://retrofit.coop

https://www.gboladedesignstudio.com

http://urbed.coop

https://carbon.coop