BDP Podcast

Welcome to The Good City podcast series, where we bring together designers, planners, engineers, environmental thinkers, academics, and community voices to explore how design can help cities tackle their biggest challenges and create better places for people and the planet. In our second episode, Toronto - Growing Pains, we turn to one of North America’s most dynamic and pressured cities. Every year, around 120,000 people arrive in the Toronto region, testing the limits of its housing, infrastructure, and public services. But behind the headlines of rising costs and crowded streets lies a bigger question: can rapid growth become a force for good? Joined by the authors of The Good City - Toronto paper, we unpack how community-centred TOD, gentle density, and inclusive design can shape a fairer, more resilient and future-ready Toronto. Panellists Michelle Xuereb (Host), Innovation Director, BDP Quadrangle Sean Hertel, Principal, Hertel Planning, Lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Waterloo, and York University Canada Harim Labuschagne, Senior Architect & Director of Design, BDP Quadrangle This podcast forms part of The Good City, a global initiative by BDP and Nippon Koei to help cities across the world become better. Find out more: https://www.bdp.com/in-depth/the-good-city

With a booming life sciences industry leading the way, investment in R&D infrastructure is already delivering positive socio-economic benefits in many parts of the UK. We're witnessing a boost in social mobility, attraction of talent, and cultural changes in dynamic hubs like Liverpool’s Knowledge Quarter and Manchester’s Oxford Road Corridor. These areas are becoming beacons of activity, creativity, and modern discovery. And with a general election just four days away, there is a good chance we will see the proliferation of more innovation districts in other major UK cities like Leeds and Birmingham. But how do we ensure that good design, placemaking, and planning are at the forefront of these new Innovation Districts? How can cities harness these developments to benefit everyone, and what lessons can we learn from other global tech and science cities like Toronto, Zug, Lille, and Lisbon?

Long gone is the simple ‘pie and pint’ set up. Make way for a more nuanced, increasingly luxurious future for sports spectatorship. From ‘fan villages’ modelled off the high street to a myriad of ticketing options offering enhanced dining, drinking and viewing add-ons, discover how top-tier venues like Everton Football Club and Ashes host, Lancashire County Cricket Ground, Emirates Old Trafford are elevating the sports fan’s big day out. Marking the second episode in our Season of Sport series, this week, BDP Pattern Architect Director, Jon-Scott Kohli is joined by Head of Sport, Gavin Elliott, Everton FC’s Senior Manager of New Stadium Sales, Vicky Jaycock and CEO at Lancashire County Cricket Club, Emirates Old Trafford, Daniel Gidney, Together, our industry experts explore the latest trends in sports-based hospitality design, asking what’s driven changes to the fan zone and how designers can respond to driving forces like sustainability, disruptive tech and demographic shifts in spectatorship.

Not only are workers demanding more flexibility in where they work, but they are also increasingly directing the shape of our offices in a post-pandemic world. But what do employees really want and need from workplaces that can’t be achieved from home setups? In this week’s episode, our guests reveal what it takes to create a truly hybrid and inclusive workplace, and how to elevate office design from merely satisfactory to revolutionary.

The design of buildings and spaces can shape our behaviour and perceptions of the world in subtle yet powerful ways. How then, have public spaces come to impact people of different genders and reinforced narrow stereotypes and assumptions? For the debut podcast in our Design for Inclusion series, we invited four guests to share their experiences of designing for gender equity. From wayfinding and lighting intensity to residential development layouts, this week’s design experts debate what truly matters when creating a more inclusive world.

This week, Alan Davies and his new panel of experts discuss how to bring old buildings back to life. As we emerge from the global pandemic, new civic strategies require more modern solutions for spaces. From adaptive reuse of historic structures to retrofit projects in modern buildings, there are more options available to building owners and designers than ever before. Retrofit and refurbishment seems like the obvious choice but is it more cost-effective and can we retain the important character and history that is inherent in these buildings?

In this first episode of our debut series, Old Buildings - New Beginnings, BDP’s head of heritage, Alan Davies meets with Lucy Townsend, Il’ic Testoni and James Hepburn to ask the fundamental question, ‘Can we make historic buildings sustainable?’ They discuss how to measure sustainability in old buildings and analyse what we can do to adapt existing structures to meet ever-stringent net zero carbon ambitions in the face of a climate emergency.