In early July 2024, Professor Simon Bell and Iain Scott visited the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), where they took part in a number of activities including a summer school with students, academic meetings with Tsinghua and Peking Universities in Beijing, and a seminar on BlueHealth at the BIT campus in Zhuhai, in the south of China.
The summer school focused on students designing a blue space in a local park and Simon and Iain introduced the theories and practical usages of the BlueHealth Behaviour Assessment Tool (BBAT) and the BlueHealth Environmental Assessment Tool (BEAT) to the students. Iain was also appointed as a visiting professor during the visit.
This visit follows the establishment of the Joint Lab on Healthy Spaces by BIT and OPENspace in the Summer of 2023 and a successful visit by faculty and students from BIT in early May (Read News post here). Looking ahead, another visit by the Edinburgh College of Art’s Head of School and Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA) and OPENspace researchers is planned for December 2024, and there’s potential for a Joint Lab conference in 2026. There are a few other exciting initiatives in the works, including the launch of an ‘International Journal of Healthy Space.’
In this video, produced by the Estonian University of Life Sciences, OPENspace Co-Director Dr Simon Bell introduces the BlueHealth Toolkit – a validated, tested and free resource for urban planners and designers to use when working on new blue space projects. The toolkit is particularly useful for conducting before and after assessments of a blue space, so that the success of a project can be evaluated. The BlueHealth Toolkit was created as part of the EU Horizon 2020-funded BlueHealth project – a pan-European research initiative that investigated the links between urban blue spaces, climate and health.
In it, the EU Horizon 2020 BlueHealth project is specifically mentioned, and a link is made directly to one of Simon Bell’s articles from his work as a Principal Investigator on the BlueHealth project https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/10/4084 which is all about the impact of a small-scale intervention in Plymouth on residents’ health and wellbeing.
The surprising benefits of blue spaces – BBC Future When Homo sapiens first evolved some 300,000 years ago, we lived in grasslands and forests, next to lakes and rivers. It wasn’t until 2007 that we became a majority-urban species. But as … www.bbc.com
On Tuesday 13 September, at the annual conference of ECLAS (the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools) held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, it was announced by the President, Dr Ellen Fetzer, that Dr Simon Bell is to receive the 2022 ECLAS Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his long career in and contribution to landscape architecture practice, research and education.
Simon started his career in the British Forestry Commission in 1979 and, after 20 years of work in forests in the UK and internationally, in 2000 he moved into academia at Edinburgh College of Art, co-founding the OPENspace Research Centre of which he is now co-director together with Professor Catharine Ward Thompson.
In the mid-2000s he also took up a position at the Estonian University of Life Sciences where he is currently Chair Professor and Head of the department of Landscape Architecture. He has been active in ECLAS since 2005, serving on the executive committee, culminating with two terms as President between 2012 and 2018.
On Tuesday 13 September, at the annual conference of ECLAS (the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools) held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, it was announced by the President, Dr Ellen Fetzer, that Dr Simon Bell is to receive the 2022 ECLAS Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his long career in and contribution to landscape architecture practice, research and education.
Simon started his career in the British Forestry Commission in 1979 and, after 20 years of work in forests in the UK and internationally, in 2000 he moved into academia at Edinburgh College of Art, co-founding the OPENspace Research Centre of which he is now co-director together with Professor Catharine Ward Thompson.
In the mid-2000s he also took up a position at the Estonian University of Life Sciences where he is currently Chair Professor and Head of the department of Landscape Architecture. He has been active in ECLAS since 2005, serving on the executive committee, culminating with two terms as President between 2012 and 2018.
