Urban C:lab is a programme initiated by Buro Happold, focused on exploring emergent disruption in the built environment. Buro Happold has always enjoyed a good debate. But even more, we thrive on action.
We have invited future leaders from across Buro Happold to take up a call to action and pool their best thinking to solve some of the intractable urban challenges facing our world today. This group has mobilised into a cross-practice collaboration called Urban C:lab.
Urban C:lab is a two-year research and development programme that bypasses routine organisational procedures at Buro Happold. We aim to equip each ‘‘C:labber’’ with the knowledge and skills required to influence real change in the communities we live and work in, each day.
Action is critical. Over the course of two years C:labbers are tasked with identifying a critical challenge, to explore and understand this, and then work to solve this in a real world context. Knowing that we don’t have all the answers and that the problems we are up against are extreme, Urban C:lab is a deliberatively collaborative endeavour.
We work with clients, designers, academia, think tanks and institutions to explore, understand and shape solutions. Achieving this is also supported by a diverse programme of field trips, design sprints, lectures and conversations, and much more.
Urban C:lab has a number of established themes including urban food resilience, inclusive placemaking, 15-minute connected neighbourhoods, and infrastructure commercialisation. Topics being explored are diverse and thought provoking, and we are already attracting the attention of governments and decision makers.
We have facilitated design sprints on behalf of and in collaboration with national, regional and local governments, the private sector and institutions. Critical to the success of such activities is our ability to draw on the existing diverse, world-class network of the Buro Happold and Urban C:lab, but crucially continuing to build this by engaging widely with new collaborators.
