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Q&A with sustainability champion, Mark Ridler
As an award winning designer with over 35 years’ experience delivering theatre and architectural lighting, Head of Lighting, Mark Ridler, leads the lighting profession across the practice. Attributing many of his ideas to the way daylight performs in natural environments, Mark has dedicated much of his career to protecting his main source of inspiration - fostering low carbon solutions and promoting the transition to a circular economy.
What does sustainability mean to you and your role at BDP?
It’s fundamental to our work. All of our lighting concepts are based around a response to the needs and desires of those that will use, inhabit and encounter our designs, which means that sustainability is always a core consideration.
How is your company/profession positively contributing to the carbon reduction challenge?
A big question - Apart from our design work and the way we run our business, I try hard to engage widely within the profession and to act as a positive voice for change. I am a contributor to the new Society of Light and Lightings circular economy evaluation tool and I am the co-founder of the Green Light Alliance – an industry network concentrating on circular economy (TM66 – CEAM make and design).
What is your approach to sustainability when embarking on a new project?
Sustainability considerations are increasingly complex. Energy (carbon) reduction, ecology, user wellbeing, and increasingly circularity sometimes come into conflict with each other. So weaving them into the brief at the earliest stage before we even start with the concept is essential. We find that you can’t apply a sustainability layer later in the process without compromising the design and sustainability performance. It helps that we have a detailed knowledge of the requirements, and in some cases helped write them. This allows us to develop design techniques where sustainability is almost instinctive.
Can you talk about a recent project you have worked on where we have used nature or nature-based solutions to help tackle the climate challenge?
Every interior project we do starts from an appreciation of daylight - the ultimate nature based lighting solution. It’s a constant source of inspiration as well as providing the ultimate zero carbon, circadian lighting environment.
What do you think are the biggest opportunities for BDP as a practice to drive the sustainability agenda?
Most sustainability challenges can not be solved in silos. The interdisciplinary nature of BDP helps hugely to further these debates practically on a project basis. The size of the practice also gives us a natural leadership role which is entirely consistent with the company history and ethos over the last sixty years.