Hassell Talks

What does bouncing Kraftwerk’s music off the surface of the moon have to do with the future of the university campus?

Universities are paying close attention to the way interstellar music-science-arts-technology-culture experience makers bluedotfestival engage audiences in cross-disciplinary learning. But how far do they need to go on campus? 

Turns out - they need to create a 'wow' factor deeply rooted in curiosity and learning. 

Who better to debate the future of the university campus than Hassell's co-lead of Education and Science, Julian Gitsham, together with the creators of bluedot, Professor Teresa Anderson and Professor Tim O’Brien of the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank.

In this episode we hear how to look at the benefits of designing environments around problem solving – rather than disciplines – and how good design can create and facilitate inclusive, innovative, and problem solving campuses.

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To celebrate the start of Melbourne Design Week, we’re excited to share a podcast from Australia’s leading architecture commission MPavilion.

The MPavilion MTalks series brings some of Melbourne’s brightest and most creative minds together on the lands of the Eastern Kulin Nation, to debate, share ideas and be inspired. The episode you're about to hear was part of an 'Illuminating' event exploring the role of data, knowledge and design in amplifying access to the ideas moving around the city. 

Hear from the event creators, architects, artists, lighting and interaction designers exploring the role of design in illuminating and engaging people in public institutions.

With thanks to MPavilion for sharing this episode with us, as well as Bonnie Shaw at Place Intelligence for leading the event. Thanks also to FreeState's Su Lim, Hannah Fox at Rising, Tim Hunt at Arup, and Finding Infinity's, Ross Harding for taking part - and Steve Coster for hosting.

Even before Covid-19, many working in the health system would claim that Emergency Departments weren’t in the best of health.

The narrative in the media, and from clinicians themselves, paints a picture of overcrowded spaces, overwhelmed and unsafe for patients and staff, bottlenecked and stretched beyond capacity yet growing bigger – and bigger - but not necessarily smarter.  Creating healthcare systems that meet the very best expectations and conditions for staff and patients should be a focus for communities and operators, and this involves examining the models of health, safety, privacy, the popularity of telehealth and the role of emerging technologies.

As part of a WomenIn_ panel event hosted by our Melbourne studio, we invited Mya Cubitt, Emergency Physician at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Stefano Scalzo, from the Victorian Health Building Authority, as well as Health, Infrastructure and Planning Consultant Brian Stevenson, to join Hassell's Health sector leader Leanne Guy and Managing Director Steve Coster to discuss the ever changing needs of Emergency Departments.

This episode was produced by Prue Vincent and Annie Scapetis.

Cities around the world are committing themselves to creating compact, amenity-rich neighbourhoods as they tackle the challenges of climate change, urban sprawl and wellbeing.

Ireland’s cities, with their history, natural amenities and passionate residents seem more ready-made than most to embrace an agenda of compact growth. But despite national planning frameworks in place, local governments, private developers and stakeholders are encountering ongoing challenges of their own in bringing ​“15-minute cities” to fruition.

“If we’re going to get people to accept the idea that it’s good to live in a smaller home in the city centre, we have to make sure that the experience outside the front door of their smaller home is really wonderful,” explains City of Dublin Architect, Ali Grehan.

In this episode of Hassell Talks, Senior Researcher Camilla Siggaard Andersen speaks to the people behind the push for compact, urban growth in Ireland: the property developers, city architects, academics and researchers, who want to move beyond a common assumption that compact growth can only come from sacrifice. 

As Hassell’s ​“Close to Home” report shows, 15-minute cities provide opportunities for more convenient living, more equitable communities and more sustainable development, saving resources and reducing emissions because of higher density. 

Could this be a new era of urbanism, for Ireland?

Our thanks to Brian Moran, Ali Grehan, Pat Farrell and Niamh Moore Cherry for sharing their insights with us.

This episode was produced by Camilla Siggaard Andersen and Prue Vincent with support from One Fine Play.

Mental health is making headlines - including in the architecture and design industry as the cumulative effects of living and working through a second year of the global Covid-19 pandemic start to become known.

So how can organisations, the industry, and individuals, take advantage of this moment to establish change and in doing so, protect the longevity and diversity of the design industry into the future?

Joining Naomi is landscape architect, Place Intelligence co-founder and Human Potential Coach Bonnie Shaw, who explains how her own extreme experience with stress and pursuit of mental wellbeing marries data, endocrinology, neuroscience and behavioural psychology to support change, and community resilience.

"Designers are motivated by a desire to make the world a better place, and so they keep designing until they get to the best possible outcome beyond the point where they're really pushing their own personal well-being."

"When you're working in really big, challenging adaptive problems, it puts so much pressure on people. And being able to do that work in a context where it's okay to talk about how you might be struggling or when you might be having problems, I think, is the only way we get through it." 

• Hassell is a proud partner of mental health advocacy organisation, PukaUp. Find out more about the work PukaUp is doing to eliminate suicide.

The British Architects Mental Wellbeing Forum Toolkit

Finding it both necessary and convenient, patients and clinicians across Australia embraced the change brought about by COVID-19 and took to telehealth in huge numbers – jumping from one million service events in March 2020 to six million a month later in April.

Healthcare is traditionally an area that can be slow to change, so this leap in uptake was a novel event in itself.

Under pandemic restrictions, clinicians didn’t have much of a choice. But the switch to telehealth wasn’t as simple as just turning on a computer or making a call, particularly in hospital settings where space and infrastructure are hard to come by.

We wanted to find out what the telehealth experiences of healthcare workers in Australian hospitals was like during 2020, and the implications for the spaces we design.

In collaboration with The University of Queensland’s Centre for Online Health, we discovered that hospital infrastructure in Australia is ill-equipped to accommodate the spaces needed for successful delivery of telehealth services during a pandemic. And with telehealth here to stay, that means these spaces are also left wanting in a future that is almost certain to include a greater mix of both in-person and telehealth consultations.

For episode 3 in season 2 of Hassell Talks, Senior Researcher Michaela Sheahan looks at what this means for the way new hospitals are designed or existing hospitals are reconfigured – and the almost once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rethink the way healthcare is offered. She’s joined by Hassell Principal Leanne Guy as well as Karen Lucas, Senior Telehealth Coordinator for Metro South Hospital and Health Service and Dr Emma Thomas, Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Services Research, The University of Queensland.

At the heart of any co-working environment is the idea that it can do much more than provide a hotspot and a hot coffee.

The best ones ask: Can we build a great like-minded community?

In the COVID-19 context, the best co-working spaces then ask whether they can solve some of the challenges thrown up by the pandemic to design for safety and trust in a physical environment.

And right now? They’re asking how the design of their spaces helps people to connect – and reconnect. To go a step further and make these connections high value, while supporting wellness and resilience.

Industry trailblazer, CEO and Founder of The Great Room Jaelle Ang, calls it the quest for a ‘modern agora’.

“If we need to move at a fast pace, we need to be in a learning environment,” she observes. “And the office needs to allow you to do that.”

Host and Senior Design Strategist Pamela Jouwena joined Jaelle Ang at the Great Room, Raffles for a conversation exploring the evolution of coworking to meaningfully connect the virtual and physical experiences – and how it’s gone beyond simply providing flexibility to being places of resilience that people can trust, where they can create community and focus on holistic wellness. At a time when it’s needed most.

This episode of HassellTalks was produced by Prue Vincent and Slavica Habjanovic.

We're back for Season Two of Hassell Talks - thanks for joining us!

The solution might be staring us – city shapers and designers – in the face. Big Data.

What exactly can big data reveal to city shapers and designers that they previously never had access to? What does it tell us about human behaviour in urban places and the opportunities to create better outcomes for stakeholders? And how does it help designers prove their effectiveness of their designs?

With Big Data as a basis, designers and clients can have more informed and meaningful conversations to help generate socially, culturally and economically valuable outcomes.

Hassell's Gerard Corcoran teams up with Norion Ubechel from Place Intelligence to dig into the role of Big Data and how it can challenge and validate the design process.

This episode of Hassell Talks was produced by Prue Vincent and Jessica van Hecke

We don’t know exactly what our lives, work and communities will look like post COVID-19. But one thing we’re sure of is that some of the trends we saw developing over the past few years have only accelerated since the global pandemic took hold.

They’re trends that are changing how we reimagine or repurpose spaces, think about mobility, and connect with each other and our communities – not to mention increase the appeal of a slowed-down culture. These shifts all have implications for the way people are interacting with places – and as designers this is a time to listen and partner with clients and communities to help us all re-emerge resilient. For this episode of our podcast, we’re joined by our good friend and collaborator David Grant of Brickfields Consulting. As consumer research experts, David and his team have been delving deeper into these trends, giving our clients and designers extra insights into the people who will use the places we create. David joins Hassell Principals Angus Bruce, Liz Westgarth, Chong Wang and Richard Mullane to discuss the impact and opportunities for cities from San Francisco to Sydney and Shanghai to London.