Dr Lee Bofkin | Co-founder & CEO, Global Street Art

04/26/19 • 34 min

One man’s mission to live in painted cities; how can street art transform both buildings and communities?

Holding a PhD in Evolutionary Mathematics from Cambridge, Lee was a former break-dancer with the Soul Mavericks Crew where he represented the UK and he has travelled the world extensively documenting street art world-wide.

In 2012, he co-founded Global Street Art with a mission to live in painted cities. This is achieved in three ways:

Curating the world’s largest online street art platform with artists from over 100 countries and hundreds of thousands of photographs and over half a million followers on social media;
Organising legal street art murals; having organised over 2,000 since 2012;
Forming an agency that works on commercial projects.

In this podcast:

What is street art and how is it already shaping our cities?
What role does art have in helping to create vibrant communities?
How are brands helping to fund the growth of street art?
How does street art retain authenticity as it enters a new, “legal” era?
Is street art designed to challenge communities or represent them?
Can we measure the impact of street art on a location?

Lee’s favourite building is the Schindler House in West Holywood; an experiment in 1920’s social architecture and arguably an early forbear of the current trend of co-living. His hot pick for innovation in the sector is Gyana AI, focused on retail analytics.

The recommended addition to the Building Our Future reading list is:

Frans Johansson, The Medici Effect: what elephants and epidemics can teach us about innovation

You can find & follow Lee and Global Street Art on social media via Instagram or Twitter for further information.
Image courtesy of Tony Briggs (http://www.tonybriggs.com/_photo_15181401.html)

One man’s mission to live in painted cities; how can street art transform both buildings and communities?

In 2012, he co-founded Global Street Art with a mission to live in painted cities. This is achieved in three ways:

Curating the world’s largest online street art platform with artists from over 100 countries and hundreds of thousands of photographs and over half a million followers on social media;
Organising legal street art murals; having organised over 2,000 since 2012;
Forming an agency that works on commercial projects.

In this podcast:

What is street art and how is it already shaping our cities?
What role does art have in helping to create vibrant communities?
How are brands helping to fund the growth of street art?
How does street art retain authenticity as it enters a new, “legal” era?
Is street art designed to challenge communities or represent them?
Can we measure the impact of street art on a location?

The recommended addition to the Building Our Future reading list is:

Frans Johansson, The Medici Effect: what elephants and epidemics can teach us about innovation

You can find & follow Lee and Global Street Art on social media via Instagram or Twitter for further information.
Image courtesy of Tony Briggs (http://www.tonybriggs.com/_photo_15181401.html)

Previous Episode

Ros Pomeroy | Co-founder, Brainy Birdz

Do we give enough thought to the impact that the design and layout of our workplaces has on our individual & collective productivity & well-being? I delve into the world of workspace science to find the answers.

Ros Pomeroy is a co-founder of Brainy Birdz; a consultancy specialising in the unpronounceable (for me, anyway) ‘zusammenarbeit’ - that’s to say, how people work together. Together with co-founder Dr Kerstin Sailer, Ros is at the forefront of using data to help diagnose what makes a workplace tick and what role design plays in this.

In this podcast:

What is workspace science and who should it be of interest to?
How is design enabling the growth in co-working that we’re seeing?
How can seating & proximity plans be optimised to bust silos in the office & bring people together?
What’s the importance of visibility within the work place?
Why are open-plan offices getting such a hard time of late?

Ros’s favourite buildings are the new Google Campus & The Francis Crick Institute at Kings Cross for their design-led focus on collaboration & knowledge sharing. Her innovation to follow is the growing trend of data-led decision making across the build environment.

The recommended addition to the newly formed Building Our Future reading list is Neil Usher’s The Elemental Workplace (see here for her review).

You can find & follow Ros on social media via LinkedIn or Twitter (@rosamundpomeroy).

For more references, do have a look at the Brainy Birdz blog. Also, Ros and Kerstin run regular workshops for anyone interested in learning more.

Next Episode

Fiona Fletcher-Smith | Group Director of Development & Sales, L&Q

Building communities at the scale needed to meet the challenges of the UK’s housing shortage.

In 2018, Fiona Fletcher-Smith left City Hall (where she was Executive Director of Development, Enterprise and Environment) to join L&Q where she is Group Director of Development and Sales, responsible for delivering the Registered Provider’s stated aim of constructing 100,000 new homes in the next decade.

One of L&Q’s flagship projects is Barking Riverside, an 443 acre site where the vision is to create a brand-new riverfront town in East London and deliver a thriving, new eco-district comprising: 10,800 homes, new schools, commercial and cultural offerings, along 2km of Thames river frontage.

In this podcast:

What are the growth plans for London largest property owner?
How does L&Q role as a long-term owner of assets influence planning and design?
What is the approach for designing new urban settlements, as at Barking Riverside?
How can you help create communities within development projects?
How do you manage meanwhile uses in long-term projects?
How can residents be brought into the discussion about future plans and continual shaping of the project and the masterplan?

Fiona is a huge fan of tall buildings (in the right context) and her choice of favourite building is the Shard for its design and positive impact on the regeneration of the locality. Fiona’s hot pick for innovation in the sector offsite construction.

The recommended addition to the Building Our Future reading list tackles collaboration in problem-solving, which is: