Energy Workshop

The first edition of the Norman Foster Foundation’s Energy Workshop will take place from April 25 to 29, 2022 with the support of GS Energy.

“With energy, we stand on the shoulders of giants with our heads in the clouds,” states the workshop’s Mentor, Luke Olsen. As he puts it, “we need to slingshot from the Newtonian laws of motion, Einstein’s relativity and E=mc² and beyond to bring our systems and structures grounded in 19th-century grids up to date. To do so, we must rapidly evolve from infrastructures that are centralised, atomised and monopolised, and depart from the hegemonies that have put our planet on a course for severe inequality, global warming and climate change.”

This workshop will aim to make visible the fundamental forms of energy, to discover cutting-edge, future-proof methodologies to harness clean energy, to develop strategies for the better distribution, transformation and empowerment of communities, buildings and cities and to integrate sustainable energy solutions into everything we do and design. 

The Norman Foster Foundation’s 2022 Energy Workshop will include seminars, lectures, one-to-one tutoring and architectural tours. The workshop will consist of a five-day event led by Luke Olsen, Programme Director, MEng in Engineering and Architectural Design, Barlett School of Architecture, University of College London (UCL).

The Workshop’s Academic Body spans a wide range of practitioners that work in different fields related to energy. This year’s Academic Body includes: Frédérick Bordry, Former Director and Accelerators and Technology, European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), Meyrin, Switzerland; Jacopo Buongiorno, Director, Centre for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (CANES), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, United States; Sheila Foster, Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Urban Law and Policy, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, United States; Iain MacDonald, Professor, Instance of Uncertain Spaces (IUS), ArtEZ University of the Arts, Arnhem, The Netherlands; Dava J Newman, Director, Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, United States; Guillermo Trotti, President and Founder, Trotti & Associates, Inc., Cambridge, MA, United States; and Holly Samuelson, Area Head, MDes in Energy and Environment, Graduate School of Design (GSD), Harvard.

After reviewing applications submitted by hundreds of candidates from around the world, the selection committee awarded ten scholarships to students from the following universities and institutions: University College London (UCL), London, United Kingdom; Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland; Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), Barcelona, Spain; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States; Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland; University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany; University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya.

Public debates
Date and time: Tuesday, April 26, 2022, 12:30–2:30pm
Venue: Fundación Francisco Giner de los Ríos, Paseo del General Martínez Campos 14, Madrid, Spain 

With the participation of Sheila Foster, Iain Macdonald, Luke Olsen, Holly Samuelson, Frédérick Bordry, Dava J Newman and Guillermo Trotti. 

Jacopo Buongiorno, Director, Centre for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (CANES), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, United States,  will chair the debates.

If you are interested in attending the public debates above, please register via Eventbrite.

The Norman Foster Foundation Energy Workshop and Public Debates are supported by GS Energy.