On the 12th of September the Future of Design 2022 conference for young designers, aimed at promoting design and inspiring young generations was finally back in person! Held at Alan Turing Building at the University of Manchester, 76 delegates from around the country joined us to participate, learn and network.
The event kicked off with a welcome from IABSE British Group Honorary Secretary Mark Bulmer. In the morning delegates heard from Laura Hannigan from Simple Works on Waste Timber & Circular Economy, Mark Bulmer from AECOM on the Humber Bridge project and Steve Mckechnie from Arup on the future of design. The talks demonstrated the wide range of skills demanded of engineers and different ways which they can be applied.
Prior to lunch the Young Designer’s Paper competition talks took place. All papers were interesting and well presented with the Judges Winner going to Kimberley Ertl, Establishing a Bridge Post – Completion Study Methodology with Judges runner up going to Stephen Walsh – A Flying Truss Footbridge for Brum and the Audience Choice Award going to Madi Kargin – Assessment tool for precast concrete buildings. Throughout the day the Young Designer’s Design Competition was on display in the hall. Two impressive entries were shortlisted with the Judges winner going to Kimberley Ertl and Pranav Darda and second place going to Stephen Walsh, Mark Saville, Zeina-Nabulsi and Andrus Kolossov. All awards were received from David Knight, Vice chair of the IABSE and Fernando Madrazo-Aguirre, who sits on the IABSE executive committee.
In the afternoon session Bola Ogunmefun from Tisserin spoke about examples of timber design projects and Adrian Tomor from Brunel University discussed about digital stone construction. It was insightful to learn about the diverse applications of different materials. A very interesting and passionate round table debate on the future of sustainable engineering – material use and construction followed these talks. It was clear that delegates of this year’s Future of Design conference had engaged with the session. In the final keynote Speaker session Joanna Bonnett from COWI spoke about a future of designing less, Albert Williamson-Taylor from AKT II spoke about challenging the concept of engineering and David Knight from Cake Industries spoke about Moving bridges.
The IABSE British Group would like to extend our thanks to the organisers (Alex Wallace, Charlotte Weatherburn, Eleanor Atherton, Zeina Al-Nabulsi and James Leung) for another superb event. We would also like to thank our sponsors: Arcadis, Jacobs, DYSE, Stantec and Redaelli. Without the generous support of these companies we could not arrange this ever popular event.
Zeina-Nabulsi, Mark Saville, Andrus Kolossov, Stephen Walsh
