Duncan Baker-Brown

Duncan is a practicing architect, academic and environmental activist. Author of ‘The Re-Use Atlas: a designer’s guide towards a circular economy’, he has practised, researched, and taught around issues of sustainable development and closed-looped systems for more than 25 years. He recently founded BakerBrown, an architectural practice and consultancy created to address the huge demands presented by the climate and ecological emergency as well as the challenges of designing in a post-COVID world. Over the years Duncan’s practices have won numerous accolades including RIBA National Awards and a special award from The Stephen Lawrence Prize for the Brighton Waste House - the prize money has since been used to set up a student prize for circular, closed loop design at the University of Brighton where Duncan teaches.

Duncan has worked on projects as diverse as 'The Greenwich Millennium Village' in London, the RIBA’s ‘House of the Future’, the multi-award-winning ‘Brighton Waste House’ and recently he designed a new building for Glyndebourne Opera that will be constructed from waste flows and organic materials grown on site. Duncan is currently working on schemes for Net-Zero Carbon social housing with Brighton & Hove District Council, where he has recently lead on the drafting of their soon to be published Circular Economy Route Map.

Duncan is currently the Principal Investigator for two EU Interreg research programmes focussing on the re-use of construction waste, building deconstruction and re-construction. He is curating a summer school for August 2021 that will be based in Brighton. It will ask teams of students from across Northern Europe to focus on re-working material from de-constructed buildings in the neighbourhood. Called the ‘School of Re-construction’, Duncan is working on this project with Rotor DC from Brussels, Bellastock from Paris, together with Brighton & Hove City Council.

Duncan is an experienced public speaker. He also author’s academic papers, curate’s exhibitions and symposia, and host’s workshops in the UK, Europe and on occasion further afield. These events test ideas relating the important role the built environment has in contributing positively towards the existential challenge the Climate and Ecological Emergency present all sections of society, especially the disenfranchised.