With less than two weeks to go until the Design for Living conference, find out more about the speakers of the event.

Air pollution. Plastic in the sea. Extinction Rebellion. Greta Thunberg. Bees. Vegan food. Public concern about sustainability has reached a high, with two-thirds of Britons agreeing that the planet is in a climate emergency in a recent poll.

Sue Riddlestone OBE, CEO & co-founder of Bioregional will discuss how we can design our homes and communities for sustainable living, as a major way that we can solve the climate and ecological crisis that world leaders have acknowledged that we face.

Sue will run through approaches taken for masterplanning at a large scale and the emerging lessons of the Bicester eco-town, through to Bioregional Homes latest developments of community-led, affordable homes, ranging from 30-100 units. This “one planet living” approach could be applied to design and build homes and create community within the normal range of build costs, with greater public acceptance and involvement, creating truly sustainable living in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc.

Sue co-founded Bioregional in 1994, an award-winning organisation which develops and implements real-life solutions for sustainability.

Sue and Bioregional initiated the iconic BedZED eco-village in London in 1997, where Sue lives and where Bioregional has its headquarters. Subsequently, Bioregional created the One Planet Living sustainability framework, which has been used in over $30bn of real-estate development around the world.

Sue and the team work with partners to create ground-breaking One Planet Communities and eco-products and services which enable us to live happy, healthy lives, within in the natural limits of our one planet. Including with B&Q and the major new eco-tourism destination Villages Nature Paris.

Bioregional also acts as a developer with projects like One Brighton showing that sustainable homes don’t need to cost more, will sell faster and help create happier, healthier environments. Sue and the team established a wholly owned subsidiary Bioregional Homes in 2018 which is building a new generation of truly affordable, sustainable homes with local communities.

Sue led Bioregional’s efforts in lobbying international governments to create what became the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. Sue was a London Sustainable Development Commissioner from 2002-14; Is a Skoll, Schwab Foundation and Ashoka award-winning social entrepreneur and an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2011 for London & South Region. Sue was awarded an OBE in 2013 for services to sustainable business and to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Design for Living: The role of design in building a million homes in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc will take place on 22-23 May 2019 at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. For booking and more information click here.