Speaker.

Michael Pawlyn

Sustainable architect

Profile:

Big Do,
Little Do.

Watch Michael Pawlyn's Big Do and Little Do.

Michael Pawlyn was part of the core team of architects at Sir Nicholas Grimshaw's practice that designed The Eden Project. He was responsible for leading the design of the Biomes and proposals for a third major climatic enclosure. In 2006 he was appointed to represent Grimshaw as a Founder Member of the UK Green Building Council and in 2007 was elected as a committee member of ‘The Edge', a think-tank dedicated to addressing important political, social and professional issues.

He has been described as a ‘Pioneer of Biomimicry' and set up his company Exploration in 2007 to focus exclusively on this area of sustainable design. This emerging discipline learns from the amazing adaptations that plants and animals have made with the benefit of a 3.5 billion year R & D period. In many ways Biomimicry represents a culmination of three long-term passions for Michael: biology, architecture and the environment.

He has lectured widely on the subject of sustainable design in the UK and abroad and in May 2005 delivered a talk at the Royal Society of Arts with Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface. In 2007 he spoke at the Google Zeitgeist Annual Conference on the subject of ‘Architecture Inspired by Nature' and in May 2009 he opposed Bjorn Lomborg at the BCO Conference.