2018 Corporate Excellence Awards Supplement
162 CORPORATE VISION / Corporate Excellence Awards 2018 22 CORPORATE VISION / Issue 7 2018 , The KTHRoyal Institute of Technology’s Centre for the Future of Places is an ongoing research thinktankwhich aims to establish and promote sustainable urban development. InMay they were named in Corporate Vision’s annual Corporate Excellence Awards, with the title of Most Innovative in Engineering & Technology, for their work as a world-leading institute in Sweden. We profiled the centre to find out more about their extraordinary work. Building the Future of Urban Development The Centre for the Future of Places (CFP) exists to fulfil one primary aim; to fuel a discussion on the shift of thinking about urbanism in strictly rigid terms – the ‘hardware’-objects of the cities, buildings and infrastructure, but more so on the software, the people and places that inhabit the space. To build on that idea organically; the true understanding of urban development lies in the observation of people and places - to carry on the metaphor - and how they interact with the hardware of the system, their environment. Think desire paths, but on a much grander, and more complex, scale. It’s an idea that is very contemporary; a sort of post-modern approach in urban planning. Also, it goes wildly against the prevailing school of thought, and would represent a paradigm-altering shift if the centre succeeds. Ultimately, they believe that true urban sustainability – creating and maintaining an environment that is healthy- lies in understanding this holistic view, and cannot simply be forced through a fragmented grasp of the mechanisms at play. Further, as part of their five- year plan to achieve their goal, they are looking to become the foremost experts in the area; developing metrics for analysing public spaces, producing white pages, and developing research proposals and grants. As the driving force behind this novel field, CFP have focused their research on four complimentary areas of research; • Urban form and human behaviour • Sustainable urbanism and housing • Public places and urban spaces • Emergent global transformations CFP plans to alter the discussion through collaborative interdisciplinary research projects, round tables, debates and conferences. Essentially, being present and vocal at any international gathering where new ideas in urbanism are the focus. By all regards, CFP is more than qualified for the title of Most Innovative in Engineering & Technology, with their plans to reinvent the field of urban planning, creating an accurate, more precise model of urban development. 1806CV36 Contact: Tigran Haas & Marta Marko Tisch Company: KTH Centre for the Future of Places Address: Drottning Kristinas väg 30, Entre Plan, Stockholm, SE- 100 44, Sweden Website: www.cfp.abe.kth.se/ centre-for-the-future-of-places Telephone: +46 8 790 60 00
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