Duncan Baker-Brown BSc. DipArch FRSA ARB RIBA
Founder of BakerBrown, Climate Literacy Champion at the School of Architecture & Design University of Brighton
Founder of BakerBrown, Climate Literacy Champion at the School of Architecture & Design University of Brighton

Duncan is an architect, academic and environmental activist. Author of “The Re-Use Atlas: a designer’s guide towards a circular economy”, he has been practicing, researching and teaching for over 25 years in the field of sustainable development and closed loop systems. He recently founded BakerBrown, an architecture and consulting firm created to address the enormous demands presented by the climate and ecological emergency and the challenges of designing in a post-COVID world. Over the years, Duncan’s practice has won numerous awards, including the 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 create a student award for closed-loop circular 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 award-winning Brighton Waste House, and he recently designed a new building for the Glyndebourne Opera House, which will be constructed from waste streams and organic materials grown on site. Duncan is currently working on zero carbon social housing projects with Brighton & Hove District Council, where he recently led the drafting of the soon to be published Circular Economy Roadmap.

Duncan is currently the principal investigator of two EU Interreg research programs focused on construction waste reuse, deconstruction and reconstruction of buildings. It is organizing a summer school for August 2021, which will be based in Brighton. It will ask teams of students from across northern Europe to focus on reusing materials from deconstructed buildings in the neighborhood. Called “School of Re-construction”, Duncan is working on this project with Rotor DC from Brussels, Bellastock from Paris and the Brighton & Hove City Council.

He is an experienced public speaker. It also writes academic papers, organizes exhibitions and symposia, and hosts workshops in the UK, Europe and sometimes further afield. These events test ideas about the important role of the built environment in positively contributing to the existential challenge that the climate and ecological emergency poses to all sections of society, especially the disenfranchised.

Guest expert at the TRANSITION WORKSHOP since 2021.