With just three weeks to go until the UK Timber Design Conference opens its doors, Jonathan Smales, Founder and CEO of Human Nature, has been announced as the opening keynote speaker.
As a developer working to make new and regenerated places at scale, Jonathan's company Human Nature seeks to demonstrate that, by embracing the reality of climate and nature crises and by addressing social injustice and cohesion through place and development strategy and great design, government missions can be achieved and lives improved.
A former MD of Greenpeace, Jonathan is still a campaigner but now does his campaigning work for exponential sustainability through the super-power of place and the communities and lifestyles great places and infrastructures can inspire and support.
Laying out a response to the national agenda to create ‘large-scale new communities across England’, the Human Nature Foundation have recently launched a paper titled ‘How Shall We Live?’. This groundbreaking report reconsiders the role of large new settlements as powerful levers of change with wide systemic impacts - environmentally, socially and economically.
Human Nature’s first project - the Phoenix in Lewes, East Sussex - puts their ambition of creating ‘whole places’ into practice. Set to become the UK’s largest timber neighbourhood, the mixed-use development will provide homes, jobs, public space and community facilities – placing sustainability at its heart from construction through to masterplanning.
If you haven't yet got your ticket for the conference, make sure to secure your spot for a day of in-depth sessions focused on a low-carbon and socially beneficial transformation of our built environment using timber.
