Golden Blue: Celebrating Earth's Natural Resources

The house we will live in, the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the phones that are inseparable from all of us. It is not irrational to say that pretty much everything in existence in one form or another is linked to the two most extracted and commodified natural resources on this planet, Water and Sand. The resource is critical to human survival, civilizations to develop and essentially underpin our daily needs. With the exponential increase in human population, an unprecedented rate and scale of over-extraction and over-utilisation of finite resources have been recorded over the past 50 years. This has had severe spatial implications on human habitation, across multiple scales from the territorial to the room, as we witness more natural phenomena across the globe.

The lecture critiques the spatial and architectural implications that are inherently linked to the extraction of natural resources and the formidable consequences that humanity must accept. The role of architects and architecture shaping our world becomes ever more instrumental to ensure greater awareness of how we strategically regulate, monitor and efficiently use scarce resources and be conscious of becoming stewards of our planet.

About the speaker

SHO ITO is a registered architect, educator in the UK and the founder of Studio ITO: Interdisciplinary Thought Operations (www.s-ito.co.uk / Instagram: studio__ito) a design and research studio working with large-scale housing developments in Cambodia, café renovations in London to private homes in Tokyo. Ito graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA). He has extensive experience and knowledge in both the academic and architectural industry, having previously worked at Stirling Prize-winning offices, Rogers Stirk Harbour+Partner, dRMM (de Rike, Marsh, Morgan) and AHMM (Allford Hall Monaghan Morris) in the UK across the commercial sector.

In conjunction with practice, Ito is currently a First Year Studio Master and a Diploma Technical Studies tutor at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. He has previously held positions as a studio master for a Bachelor of Architecture Studio at the University of Westminster, University of Cambridge and Nottingham Trent University. Ito has been invited as a guest critic, lecturer, and has given workshops and seminars at various institutions globally. His work has also been widely published and exhibited on different platforms and publications.