RESET 2010

Dear RESETers!

This won't be a long first entry, but just to say welcome to my blog! I am a director and trustee of RESET, the sustainable buildings training charity. RESET was set up in 2007 by students and staff of the Graduate School of the Environment, at the Centre for Alternative Technology, Machynlleth, where I teach part time on their environmental Architecture Msc (check it out - www.cat.org.uk).

This year, RESET starts its training in earnest with biodiversity, water, energy and materials use at the heart of our programme. We also launched a new nationwide competition at Ecobuild - the Integrated Habitats Design Competition, www.ihdc.org.uk, which Dusty Gedge (livingroofs.org), the ecologist Gary Grant and I dreamt up over the last year, based on a competition run by the City of Portland in 2007 (www.integratinghabitats.org). It is open to all and emphasises the need to design our built environment with nature and biodiversity to the fore.

We ran our first Ecosystems Services training in March and are looking forward to developing training links with other partner institutions and organisations. We also support ecological community-led design groups and are enjoying working with Friends of Devonshire Road Nature Reserve for a new visitor centre, and Bootstrap Company for Dalston Roof Park.

I'll write more soon about what RESET is up to but in the meatime, we are based in Dalston in Hackney, north London, so drop in and see us! or let us know what you are up to - blanche.cameron@reset-development.org

Blanche