End of year Greetings from Tibbalds

As we celebrate the next generation, we also mark our 20th anniversary as Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design, continuing the much longer tradition started by Francis Tibbalds in 1978 when he first started an urban design practice.

Making great places for people and planet remains our focus going into 2024 and key commitment we have set ourselves is to become Net-zero carbon by 2030.

This 20 year milestone on our journey, is a great opportunity to reflect on the past and look towards the future. We hope to meet up and connect with many of you in the next year as part of our reflection and planning for the future.

We feel genuinely thankful for having had the opportunity to collaborate with and meet many amazing people throughout the year.

Throughout the year, we have welcomed seven graduates and young people for internships and work placements. It is one of our joys each year to help young people gain practical and useful experience within the Planning, Urban Design and Architecture environment. We want to thank the following students for their time with us:

• Clement S - undergraduate student
• Aisha H – graduate
• Camila N S - undergraduate student
• Oscar B - postgraduate student
• Abigail S - sixth form student
• Rosie P - undergraduate student
• Marlon D-W - Year 10 student

You can read about some of their experiences here, from Oscar Bayley and Camila Nunez Suarez.

Three of our interns have now become permanent members of staff, Oscar and Camilla continue working with us during their holidays while they complete their courses and Aisha has become a full-time member of our team.

As our junior team grows, Kitti and James have been promoted from Assistant to Urban Designer and Planner.

Supporting and engaging with the younger generations has been a theme this year.

As part of Tibbalds work on the Carpenters Estate in Stratford, East London, over the past three years we have been really pleased to see this summer that public realm interventions designed as part of the young designers project have now been implemented, following a programme of work with young people from the estate.

This project has been funded and delivered by members of the Tibbalds multidisciplinary team and led by Make:Good as part of our social value commitment to the project and in line with 8 pillars of the LB Newham's community wealth building strategy. The programme has involved a range of activities supporting young people in understanding the built environment, the wider industry roles, and in designing up proposals for improving the public realm that meet the needs of young people.

We also worked with the Local Village Network (a charity working with young people to ensure they have positive networks) at a local school, supporting students to work in teams to put together design entries to the Mayor's Design Future London Programme. In weekly sessions, Tibbalds alongside Jennifer Ross and Sarah Featherstone provided the group with information about their career paths, and helped groups conceive design concepts for improving their local areas - including retrofitting a multi-storey car park into a community centre, and proposing a new homeless shelter on Old Kent Road.

On the project side, our thanks go to the Young Dynamos in Bradford who have helped formulate the authority-wide design code for Bradford Council.

Our annual tradition of supporting Gingerbread City has expanded our horizon to the underwater world. S.U.G.A.R. (Society for Underwater Glucose Applications and Research) is a cutting edge research station that is exploring new depths and previously undiscovered species. Currently stationed at a historic shipwreck, the gingerbread team are on the edge of an exciting discovery and will then no doubt be moving to new waters in search of their next breakthrough. The S.U.G.A.R submersible treads lightly on the sea bed, sitting on stilts for minimum disturbance of its underwater zone of research.

As part of our involvement in Gingerbread City we designed a children's activity pack around this year's theme – Water in Cities. The pack was designed to get children thinking creatively about water and flooding – how they use water, how to design cities to prevent flooding and an activity to design and make a building on stilts.

We wish you all a happy, healthy and successful new year!

The Tibbalds team

Appointed to Homes England Development and Regeneration Framework.

This year Tibbalds has made a charitable donation to the Trussell Trust. The Trussell Trust helps provide emergency food and compassionate and practical support to people locked in poverty to help them resolve the crises that they face.