Dr Nirmal Kishnani
Dr Nirmal Kishnani, PhD, is Chief Editor of FuturArc and resident Jury Chair of FuturArc competitions. He is an advocate, educator and practitioner in the field of Green building design, presently with the Department of Architecture at the National University of Singapore where he holds the appointment of Assistant Dean and Programme Director. He has lectured and written widely on the subject of Greening process. Since 2002 –when he founded one of the first dedicated Green design consultancy operating in Asia – he has been involved in landmark projects in the region including the Asian Development Bank, Manila, and Gardens by the Bay, Singapore. Dr Kishnani is author of the 2012 FuturArc publication Greening Asia –Emerging Principles for Sustainable Architecture, and the 2019 book on ecopuncture.
Designing with Nature: Pinpricks of Transformative Change
Every development, no matter how small, from the moment that it is commissioned until it is torn down, enters into an unspoken contract with the world that it inhabits. It can be a burden on resources, disruptive to natural processes, or it can contribute positively to the commons, the network of shared spaces and flows. This presentation offers an overview of transformative ideas from thought leaders who, by acts of design, seek to bridge urban and natural, built and biological, urban and rural. The goal is to clarify what is meant by ecological design in the Asian context, and to examine morphology of form as a way of crafting solutions.