A two day seminar: HUMANS AND NATURE: How we shape and are shaped by our environment

The Institute for Cultural Research presents:

Human beings evolved as part of the natural world. We have developed societies, tools and structures in response to an often hostile environment. However, most of us live in a man-made, urban world. Whether we enjoy nature or ignore it, we no longer believe it to be the dominant force in our lives. Now our society is becoming preoccupied with nature again, in the form of global warming – but is this at the expense of a wider enquiry: how do we shape and how are we shaped by our surroundings?

This seminar will challenge us to re-examine fundamental aspects of how we perceive and relate to the environment we live in. How are perceptions and behaviour formed by our surroundings? How do we react to threats and why do we respond so slowly to global warming, but so quickly to global terror? What are the implications for architects? How should they design and plan to give value to the natural world? Do we control or are we controlled by the environment we build? At a time when more human beings choose to live in cities than anywhere else, we need to look again at the relationship between humanity and nature.

HUMANS AND NATURE: How we shape and are shaped by our environment

THE SPEAKERS AND THEIR SUBJECTS
(in anticipated order of speaking)

Saturday, 23rd February 2008 (from 9.45 am to 5.15 pm approx)

Introduction
Sir Patrick Bateson, FRS, Emeritus Professor of Ethology at Cambridge University, is President of the Zoological Society of London, former Biological Secretary to the Royal Society and former Provost of King’s College, Cambridge. He will introduce the seminar and act as chairman throughout.

What are we doing to Planet Earth?
Sir Brian Hoskins, FRS, is a Royal Society Research Professor and Professor of Meteorology at the University of Reading. Previously he was Vice-Chair of the Joint Scientific Committee for the World Climate Research Programme and has been deeply involved in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He will be discussing some of the problems created for our planet, often as a by-product of human activity. He will argue that we can and must limit these problems by prediction and action founded on understanding.

Intimate Relations: human evolution and the environment
Professor Robert Foley, Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, is Leverhulme Research Professor of Human Evolution at the University. He is also Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, of which in 2001 he was co-founder. His research has covered a wide range of problems in human evolution and has produced over 100 papers, as well as a number of books, most recently Principles of Human Evolution (2003). In his talk he will be exploring human evolution in terms of the role that climatic change has played in determining its course. He will try to consider when and why the relationship between humans and their environment changed and how this fits with the pattern of terrestrial evolution.

Environments for life: turning the world outside-in
Professor Tim Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He has written extensively on environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, on evolutionary theory in anthropology, biology and history, on the role of animals in human society, and on human ecology. He will argue that one of the greatest impediments to securing the continuity of a world fit for humans and non-humans to live in lies in the mismatch between the ‘environment’ of immediate experience and the ‘Environment’ of scientific and policy discourse. Overcoming this mismatch calls for a way of thinking about the environment that refuses absolute distinctions between the natural and the man-made and between stability and change.

Why do we live in cities?
Professor Ricky Burdett is Chief Adviser on Architecture and Urbanism for the London 2012 Olympics and Centennial Professor in Architecture and Urbanism at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was adviser to the Mayor of London from 2000–2006 and Director of the 10th International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia. This illustrated lecture will explore the impact of the architecture of the city on the human condition, and how, as more and more people come closer together to live in cities, democracy, social justice and environmental equity are affected by the decisions we – as architects, planners and politicians – make about the shape of our buildings and cities.

Sunday, 24th February 2008 (from 10.00 am to 5.15 pm approx)

Why do we leave it so late?

Reactions to environmental disasters and the rules of place
Professor David Canter is Professor of Psychology at the University of Liverpool where he directs the Centre for Investigative Psychology. We organise our lives, he says, to maintain our current pattern of behaviour. This is fundamental to how we deal with the world because it draws on how we see ourselves and the narratives that structure our transactions with others. These ‘rules of place’ can be seen in how people deal with small scale emergencies as well as large scale disasters. There will be no profound change in how we interact with our environment until we address directly changes in the rules of place.

Nature and daylight in healthcare buildings
Professor Roger Ulrich is Beale Endowed Professor of Health Facilities Design at Texas A&M University and a faculty fellow of the Center for Health Systems and Design. He will be examining the mounting evidence which suggests that architectural design and siting decisions for healthcare buildings, by influencing the amount of exposure patients receive to nature and to daylight, can improve medical outcomes and reduce the costs of care.

Architecture: putting Humpty together
Richard Burton, CBE, with his colleagues Peter Ahrends and Paul Koralek, founded the well known architectural practice ABK Architects. They practiced together for over forty years and were regarded as pathfinders in such areas as energy conservation, the bringing together of art and architecture, and work on health buildings which enhance the healing effect. His talk will aim to bring issues raised at this conference together with his own experience and to relate them to architecture.