Funda Willetts

New Member of CESW- Funda Willetts

Funda Willetts joined our team as Sustainable Communities Manager in October.  She is seconded to the role by Bath & North East Somerset Council where she has been a Senior Urban Designer in the Planning Service since 2006.  She also teaches undergraduates architecture studio as a Visiting Lecturer at UWE.  Funda is an architect who specialises in the sustainable conservation of historic buildings and sites and has worked in practices in both London and Bath.  Her research work and roles in both the private and public sectors of the construction industry have greatly informed her views on achieving Sustainable Communities and will serve as a sound foundation on which to develop the sustainable communities agenda within the team.
 
For example, Funda's personal research centres around community and conservation led regeneration looking at development grounded within the established built fabric of a place, which often already embodies a source of common identity for diverse communities.  She writes:
 
This work looked at places where the industry or enterprise around which communities had grown fell into decline leaving a legacy of derelict old buildings and sites.  I travelled to Mexico, the USA, Canada and Germany to observe projects at varying degrees of progress.  Poignant reminders of what regeneration should be about were demonstrated by how the level of involvement a community had in initiating and implementing regeneration projects directly influenced the overall success of development proposals.  Factors such as strong leadership and prime funding from State bodies were also critical for success giving us cues for how we could improve projects here.  A report of the destinations studied and a summary of findings can be found at the following link:  www.wcmt.org.uk/reports/127_1.pdf
 
I find learning from examples abroad a great source of inspiration for projects at home because it helps to analyse the way we do things in the UK in more detail.  In October, I returned to Germany on a self-funded trip to Freiburg with a number of Council colleagues to explore the ideas for achieving Sustainable Communities there and speak to those that initiated them.  Once again we found that strong leadership by the state was integral to getting projects off the ground where they then built up a momentum for communities to carry on the development and regeneration process themselves.  Examples such as community owned wind turbines, self-build volume housing solutions, local wine production and co-ordinated infrastructure projects were just some of the examples we could implement here within our existing policy frameworks to meet our own communities needs.