Norman Foster Foundation

In this episode of the Common Futures Series, Vishaan Chakrabarti talks about how last century impacted on cities, in a way that they were created for cars not for people. This century's challenge is to give the cities back to the people, by creating new solutions using new technologies that can make cities more sustainable. Vishaan Chakrabarti is the founder and creative director of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU). He is the author of A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America, published in 2013. Chakrabarti is currently on leave from his tenured faculty position at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), where he served as the William W. Wurster Dean of the College of Environmental Design. After the tragic events of 9/11, he was appointed to be the planning director for Manhattan. In this position he collaborated on the nowrealised efforts to save the High Line and revitalise the World Trade Center site. He serves on the boards of the Architectural League of New York, the Regional Planning Association, the Norman Foster Foundation and The World Around You. Common Futures is a new series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aim to empower our community to make positive change as a platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that will shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

This episode of Common Futures features the winner of the 2021 RIBA Norman Foster Foundation Travelling Scholarship, Weronika Zdziarska, from the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Zdziarska explains that this project will evaluate previous interventions carried out by international, regional and local organisations in South America, to improve the safety of women in cities. Five cities have been selected for evaluation, each representing different attitudes and responses to this area of research: Medellín, Colombia; Quito, Ecuador; Santiago, Chile; Montevideo, Uruguay and Curitiba, Brazil. The proposal seeks to demonstrate the relationships between gender inequality and design, and to outline best practices for building more inclusive cities. Common Futures is a new series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aim to empower our community to make positive change as a platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that will shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Kent Larson is Director of City Science at the MIT Media Lab, with research focused on compact transformable housing, ultralight autonomous mobility systems, sensing and algorithms to recognize and respond to complex human behavior, and advanced modeling, simulation, and tangible interfaces for urban design. Larson's book, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks, was selected as one of the Ten Best Books in Architecture 2000 by the New York Times Review of Books. He has founded or cofounded multiple MIT spinoff companies including ORI Living, an architectural robotics company creating systems for dynamically reconfigurable environments. In this podcast, Kent Larson explains the concept of autonomous communities to create the autonomous cities of the future. He also proposes that future architects should be antidisciplinary in order to make the concept of autonomous cities a reality. Common Futures is a new series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aim to empower our community to make positive change as a platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that will shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Tim Stonor is a British architect and urban planner who graduated from The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and established the architectural consulting company Space Syntax Limited. Passionate about the ways in which people move, interact and transact in buildings and urban places, Stonor has been recognised internationally for his work in the design of spatial layouts. Alongside his practice, Tim Stonor is a founding member and former director of The Academy of Urbanism, a Visiting Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture and a Harvard Loeb Fellow. In this podcast, Tim Stonor highlights the importance of urban design in tackling the main challenges that society faces in cities. Tim Stonor imagines the future of cities not only where traffic exists, but also where culture is generated and new ideas are born, with urban design centred on the pedestrian rather than the car. Common Futures is a new series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aim to empower our community to make positive change as a platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that will shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Mette Ramsgaard is an award-winning architect and head of the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (CITA). Ramsgaard's research centres on the intersection between architecture and computer science. Her focus is on the changes that digital technologies cause in the way architecture is thought, designed and built. Mette Ramsgaard has received the 2016 Innovative Academic Program Award of Excellence awarded to CITA by ACADIA and the 2011 Anna Nordlander Prize for female architects, among others. In this podcast, Ramsgaard recognises that architects are now standing in front of a new practice with new digital tools that are allowing to rethink the building process. She also acknowledges the impact that robotics will have in the architecture sector in the near future, including the conceptual changes. Common Futures is a new series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aim to empower our community to make positive change as a platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that will shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Farshid Moussavi is an award-winning architect and founder of Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA), aiming to go beyond how we have come to think of architecture by questioning the use of buildings. Moussavi is professor in practice of architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and was elected Royal Academician in 2015. She has published three books, The Function of Ornament, The Function of Forms and The Function of Style, based on her research and teaching at Harvard. In this podcast, Farshid Moussavi acknowledges the struggle of understanding and assimilating problems, means and tools arising. She finds potential in the way architecture and the digital have been meeting each other, with architects now relying on digital tools in an indispensable way. Moussavi explains how the use of the digital has led architecture back to its raw state and has liberated buildings from basic ideas of efficiency and storage into places that inspire. She appreciates new problems as opportunities for architecture to make a difference and make the world a better place. Common Futures is a new series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aim to empower our community to make positive change as a platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that will shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Farshid Moussavi is an award-winning architect and founder of Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA), aiming to go beyond how we have come to think of architecture by questioning the use of buildings. Moussavi is professor in practice of architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and was elected Royal Academician in 2015. She has published three books, The Function of Ornament, The Function of Forms and The Function of Style, based on her research and teaching at Harvard. In this podcast, Farshid Moussavi acknowledges the struggle of understanding and assimilating problems, means and tools arising. She finds potential in the way architecture and the digital have been meeting each other, with architects now relying on digital tools in an indispensable way. Moussavi explains how the use of the digital has led architecture back to its raw state and has liberated buildings from basic ideas of efficiency and storage into places that inspire. She appreciates new problems as opportunities for architecture to make a difference and make the world a better place. #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Hasier Larrea is an award-winning engineer, designer, and entrepreneur who is introducing robotic interiors to modern living. Recognizing the need for urban spaces that are versatile and vibrant, flexible and responsive, Larrea founded Ori, Inc. in 2015, challenging the world to see the potential in all spaces, unlocked by advances in technology and empowered by a different point of view that moves us toward a more affordable, accessible and sustainable urban future.   In this podcast, Hasier Larrea explores how the qualities of the digital world are coming into the physical world to change the way we see and look at spaces. Larrea dispute the general belief of more square footage meaning more functionality, envisioning future spaces as designed to adapt to individuals and as the solution to affordability in the urban environment. Hasier Larrea defines the city of the future as denser, with more people able to live in the city without the compromises of density, making it possible to live large in a small footprint.   #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo are the Co-Founders and Directors of Ecosistema Urbano, a design and consulting company founded in 2000 operating within the fields of urbanism, architecture, engineering, and sociology. Ecosistema Urbano defines their approach as urban social design, understanding the design of environments, spaces, and dynamics in order to improve the self-organization of citizens, social interaction within communities, and their relationship with the environment. In this podcast, Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo explore the question of ‘how can we engage the citizens into the design making process and into the decision-making process?’ Delving into the challenge of designers to engage in a conversation with the public, they envision the autonomous city as composed of empowered active citizens in charge of their own future. The transition from our current city to the autonomous city leads designers to look into both worlds of reality and utopia, addressing real challenges while aiming at ambitious projects. #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Norman Foster is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Foster + Partners, an award-winning British architectural design and engineering firm, and the President of the Norman Foster Foundation. Based in Madrid with a global reach, the foundation promotes interdisciplinary thinking and research to help new generations of architects, designers and urbanists anticipate the future. In this podcast, Norman Foster addresses the question of how crises have improved the quality of life of the cities, effectively transforming them. Foster uses the recent global covid-19 pandemic as an example of changing attitudes engendering positive changes within cities leading to the rebirth of the traditional European city. Reexploring housing, transportation, sustainability, technology and design through a holistic and innovative eye Norman Foster demonstrates ‘the only constant is change’, defining cities through their evolution and the power of city leaders. The ultimate city giving equal importance to sustainability and quality. #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Anna Dyson, Hines Professor of Architecture and Professor of Forestry & Environmental Studies at Yale University, is also the Founding Director of the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture (CEA). The Center of Ecosystems in Architecture (CEA) unites researchers across multiple fields in the development of transformative systems for the Built Environment. The Center reinvents the DNA of the built fabric and prioritizes the requirements of living ecosystems towards the development of innovative methods for buildings and cities that support biodiversity with clean energy, water, and materials. In this podcast, Anna Dyson argues how technology and robotics have profoundly changed society into the Age of the Internet of Things. She recognizes the need to rewrite previous decisions regarding our urban environment and our relations between the living and non-living systems. Anna Dyson believes in the future of contemporary urban systems lying in more biocompatible systems and producers of net biodiversity. Dyson advises the young to follow their passion, and to keep questioning your environment, to listen to your own voice in order to become a strongly participating member of society. #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Ben Vickers, Chief Technology Officer at the Serpentine Galleries in London, attempts to understand through his work how systems of distribution, both human and other, come to affect our personal perception of reality. Vickers is an initiator of the open-source monastic order unMonastery, a non-profit project currently based in Athens and a new kind of social space designed to serve the local communities of towns or small cities throughout Europe in solving key social and infrastructural problems. In this podcast, Ben Vickers raises the question of ‘are the starting points or the genesis point for a monastery still relevant now?’ Vickers uncovers how unMonastery aims to challenge existing dependency chains and economic fictions by exploring the arising issues of our time and addressing the challenge of technology in our lives today. Relying on the timeless concept of the monastery, Ben Vickers argues for the application of rules around the use and making of technology and infrastructures. This leads him to question the transformation of the everyday life of an individual existing in society without any possibility to exit. #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Iulia Cistelecan, student from the London School of Architecture, was awarded the 2020 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship for her project ‘Life Between Shelters: Refugee camps of today becoming cities of tomorrow.’ Iulia’s project will examine the role that architecture can play in transforming today’s refugee camps into sustainable communities. In this podcast, Iulia Cistelecan shares her project’s plan as she will travel to four refugee camps across Africa, Western Asia, the Middle East, and South Asia: Bidibidi (Uganda), Zaatari (Jordan), Shatila (Lebanon) and Kutupalong (Bangladesh). She explores the topic of spaces between shelters with a focus on the transition from temporary refugee camps to sustainable cities, highlighting the importance of educational and social infrastructure in building community growth and resilience. #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Diébédo Francis Kéré, Architect Burkinabé, established the Kéré Foundation parallel to his studies and founded in 2005 Kéré Architecture. His architectural practice has been recognized nationally and internationally thanks to Kéré’s pioneering of a communal approach to design and his commitment to sustainable materials as well as modes of construction through his development of innovative construction strategies that combine traditional building techniques and materials. In this podcast, Francis Kéré explores how participation can bring quality into informal settlements. Kéré defines Africa as concerned with abundant opportunities, economic capacities and a huge potential for Architectural growth. Francis Kéré express his hope and belief in the work of governments and informal settlements as partners, considering the settlements as participants to cities and catalysts for development as part of the community. Kéré concludes with the importance of the role of communities in the development of societies of the future as the representative of people’s needs. The city of the future being defined as a city dedicated to the people. #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Mary Lou Jepsen, a technical executive, and inventor in the fields of display, imaging, and computer hardware founded OpenWater in 2016, a startup working on fMRI-type imaging of the body using holographic, infrared techniques. With this project, Jepsen focused on devising a new generation of imaging technologies, with high resolution and low costs, enabling medical diagnoses and treatments, and a new era of fluid and affordable brain-to-computer communications. In this podcast, Mary Lou Jepsen explains the idea behind Open Water, highlighting the need to use technologies to build better, faster, and cheaper solutions in healthcare that allow diagnosis without opening the body or brain. With this new form of technology, Mary Lou Jepsen recognizes the opportunity of such development democratizing healthcare and enabling to communicate with thought alone. Jepsen continues by developing how this innovation seems to be the inevitable future of communication emerging from our understanding of the human brain. #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Luis Bettencourt, Pritzker Director of the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation at the University of Chicago, creates in his research new urban theories explaining how cities thrive and the challenges they face. He focuses on understanding the role of innovation and technological change as a driver of economic growth and human development in cities around the world and throughout history. In this podcast, Luis Bettencourt highlights the social essence of cities, looking at space as a platform. Bettencourt perceives slums as a result of fast-growing cities, at the center of research for better understanding cities and human development. Luis Bettencourt describes the city of the future as even bigger than the big cities of today, more complex, more interconnected, more diverse, with an even greater excitement and harnessing change for the benefit of people and of the environment. He advises not to look at cities or urban environments as problems but to look at what they do well. #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Urban practitioner Celine D’Cruz is one of the founding members of the Society for the Promotion of Area Resources Centers (SPARC), working in over 60 Indian cities and towns to build the capacity of urban poor organizations to address issues of urban poverty. She is also one of the founding members of Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI), a movement of the urban poor that has supported thousands in building new housing and sanitation facilities in many cities in Asia and Africa. In this podcast, Celine D’Cruz highlights the role of communities in architecture as well as the challenge raised by the informal settlements in cities. Exploring the question of how to formalize informality, D’Cruz argues for the involvement of governments to embrace and include informality as an opportunity, contributing to the city’s economy. She understands the importance of inclusion and including the most underprivileged and issued from informal settlements, unifying the formal and informal through design and community. #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

Amber Case is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and a visiting researcher at the MIT Center for Civic Media. She studies the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way cultures think, act, and understand their worlds. Case founded CyborgCamp, unconferences about the future of the relationship between humans and technology. In this podcast, Amber Case emphasises the importance of organizing spaces along with the noise around us. Taking the Japanese and United-States systems for example, she calls attention to the role of technology and futurism in architecture as well as to the impact of reverberation on individuals in our society. Case concludes by highlighting the power of a good design and the importance of developing with your mind and your body in order to develop a feeling of physical and emotional awareness. #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org

David Moinina Sengeh, born and raised in Sierra Leone, with a PhD from the MIT Media Lab., tells the story of his experience as Chief Innovation Officer at the Government of Sierra-Leone and Research Scientist at IBM Africa, where he leads a healthcare team for implementing AI-enabled systems for treatment and management of disease in Africa. In this podcast, David Moinina Sengeh talks about the importance of technology as part of our education and health system. From his experience as first Chief Innovation Officer at the Government of Sierra-Leone, he argues the need for bringing together science, technology and innovation to address national development priorities across all sectors and industries, opening the possibility for an innovation ecosystem in society and for young people to have the opportunity of learning state-of -the-art analytics and computational thinking. #NFFStories is a series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org/

Mercedes Bidart -27-year-old city planner from Argentina graduated with a master’s from MIT- tells the story of her experience as a young entrepreneur, Co-Founder and CEO of Quipu Market, a digital marketplace for micro-businesses in low-income communities of Latin America. In this podcast, Mercedes elaborates on the developments of Quipu as a trading platform enabling communities to visualize the local economy to then work together to transform it. Focusing on putting technology in the hands of the users, Quipu answers the need for trading in informal settlements by providing them with a platform for their own economy therefore not only changing the status quo and the way people are transacting but also changing their everyday dynamics and creating circular economies. #NFFStories is a new series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. www.normanfosterfoundation.org/

In the fifth #NFFStories podcast, Adrian Bowyer, Founder and Director of RepRap Ltd., develops his experience as academic body member of the 2019 Robotics Atelier and his seminar presented during the week-long event on the reasoning behind technology copying itself. Bowyer's project consists in creating humanity’s first general purpose self-replicating manufacturing machine, and his company researches self-replicating open-source 3D printing. RepRap printer takes the form of a free desktop 3D printer capable of printing plastic objects. Since many parts of the printer are made from plastic and the printer prints those parts, RepRap self replicates by making a kit of itself. RepRap is about making self-replicating machines, and making them freely available for the benefit of everyone. #NFFStories is a new series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future.

In the fourth #NFFStories podcast, Charlie Palmer, winner of the 2015 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship develops his experience with his winning project ‘Cycling Megacities’ after visiting six developing countries and eleven cities: Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Kolkata, Dhaka, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Shanghai. Charlie Palmer, a young architect at the Norman Foster Foundation graduated from Sheffield University School of Architecture, Sheffield, UK, won in 2015 the annual RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship for his proposal ‘Cycling in Megacities.’ His proposed project focuses on exploring the current conditions for cycling in cities of over ten million people. #NFFStories is a new series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future.

In the third #NFFStories podcast, Inventor, entrepreneur and scientist W. Daniel Hillis invite us to discover more about his project ‘The Clock of the Long Now’ also called the ‘10,000 Year Clock’. The project located deep inside the Sierra Diablo mountains along the Texas-Mexico border consists in a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. The mechanical clock under construction aims to be a symbol, an icon for long-term thinking. Daniel Hillis goes on, developing on the topics of technology, progress and the future. W. Daniel Hillis is an American inventor, entrepreneur, scientist, and writer who is particularly known for his work in computer science. He is best known as the founder of Thinking Machines Corporation, a parallel supercomputer manufacturer. More recently, Hillis co-founded Applied Minds, the technology R&D think-tank. Daniel Hillis was part of the academic body for the 2019 Digital X Workshop held at the Norman Foster Foundation headquarters in Madrid in February. #NFFStories

Siti Nurafaf Ismail, a 21-year-old Malaysian architecture student from the University of Malaya in Malaysia, won this year's thirteenth annual RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship for her proposal ‘Architecture of Humility.’ Her proposed project focuses on exploring the role of the architect within community architecture in natural disaster zones. In this podcast, Siti give an update about her project and its developments. Having already completed the first phase of her research in Lombok, Indonesia she will now examine two other cities affected by natural disasters: Hokkaido in Japan and Karachi in Pakistan. Working with local volunteer organizations, Siti will be exploring each community’s rebuilding process first-hand and examining how architects fit into that experience. #NFFStories

#NFFStories is a new series of podcasts produced by the Norman Foster Foundation that aims to empower our community to make positive change. A new platform for people around the world to share and hear inspirational stories and ideas that are going to shape the future. In the first episode, we interview Dr #JanicePerlman, Founder and President of The Mega-Cities Project, about the myth of marginality and her work in contesting prevailing stereotypes about migrants and shantytowns and discrediting the policies of eradication by favela removal. http://www.normanfosterfoundation.org/