FWTF, with Finding Infinity

Meet Margot Jacobs for the latest FWTF podcast. Margot is a landscape architect, an amazing human, a creative activist and a soul dancer. Have a listen to Margot’s story, ️and hear about an amazing project she worked on recently to challenge the Dakota Pipeline creatively by demonstrating how much renewable energy could be generated with that same land using maps.

Margot Jacobs has a passion for designing meaningful spaces with and for people. She began her focus on sustainable systems-based solutions for resilient communities at the Swedish Research Institute (RISE). Drawing on her background in industrial design, research, and art, Margot designs and advocates for multiple-benefit landscapes including public parks, waterways, infrastructure systems and mixed-use developments in the US as well as Central and South America. She is currently leading the design for several mixed-use projects, parks, and green infrastructure along the LA River and in the Arts District. Committed to work that improves quality of life, she is active in water conservation, environmental justice, and pro-bono efforts. Her writing on the benefits of green infrastructure has appeared in the LA Times, Flaunt Magazine and the Stockholm World Water Week Proceedings. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design from the Georgia Institute of Technology, her Master of Professional Practice in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU, and her Master of Landscape Architecture at UC Berkeley.

FRSA RIBA Director of BBM Sustainable Design & Senior Lecturer at The School of Architecture & Design University of Brighton Duncan has practised, researched, and taught around issues of sustainable development for over 25 years. He has worked on projects as diverse as ‘The Greenwich Millennium Village’ n London with Ralph Erskine, and more recently the multi-award-winning New Country House and Estate Master Plan in Sussex UK. Author of ‘The Re-Use Atlas: a designer’s guide towards a circular economy’ published by RIBA, he is perhaps best known for a series of thought-provoking ‘house’ projects testing issues of sustainable design and resource management including ‘The House that Kevin Built’ in 2008 and ‘The Brighton Waste House’ in 2014. Duncan’s research tests the viability of a number of practices and materials, recognising the potential of discarded “waste” as a valuable resource in the future of construction, as well as live projects as valuable teaching aides. Through his projects he fosters community development and regeneration, working with apprentice builders and students, informing young people of all ages as to their role in sustainable living. Duncan creates examples of community practice that, through the use of innovative techniques such as ‘resource mapping’ can redefine what local materials are and match them with local skills and trades. Duncan is currently the Principal Investigator for a 3million Euro Interreg research programme considering the viability of local waste flows to be processed into insulation for the social housing sector. He lectures widely on issues relating to sustainable development in the design and construction industry, and has recently curated ‘The WasteZone’, a three-day symposium involving over 25 invited speakers including Prof. Walter Stahel, Prof. Michael Braungart and David Benjamin of New York’s ‘The Living’.