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Tuesday 25 September 2012

Communications Learnings from Green Architecture


Since Wiebke Herding, founder of the Brussels Sustainability Communications Lunches, relocated to Amsterdam, Sustainability Consult offered to continue organising these informal meetings for communications professionals interested in sustainability issues.  Our first invited speaker was the young Gent-based architect Noémie Benoit. 

The talk was centered on the project that recently received first prize in the Green Architecture Competition 2012.  Noémie inspired us to look to urban buildings as functional units in a 'metropolitan ecosystem'.  According to this dynamic architect, urban facilities offer endless opportunities to contribute to biodiversity, sustainability and the wellbeing of the population.  Her concept of a vertical bus terminal in New York was truly inspiring.

Today, the major challenge lies in communicating sustainable architecture projects to a wide range of stakeholders.  Noémie worked closely with a diverse team to build a solid business model that could be replicated, showing the exact contribution of each of the involved parts.  This model of stakeholder engagement and the business model canvas Noémie developed to show the financial models for this kind of development are techniques which could be applied to many different projects.

Finally the innovative way to reach a range of audiences was to create an magazine where all the steps of the project were explained by means of colourful and accessible articles. Noémie’s approach is light and dynamic.  She feels that sustainability has become heavy over the last ten years.  By communicating a vision visually, we can all share our highly personal visions of a better future, as Noémie did.

You can find more about Noémie's project here and see other photos from the lunch here.

Blog by Ana I. Catarino

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