Spotlight: Connor Rusby
Happy new year! Love Design Studio are looking forward to an exciting year of new horizons, positive environmental change and engagement with you lovely readers.
This post is the first in an employee spotlight interview series which will highlight the diversity of our talent, experience, and personalities we have across the team.
In this first quarter of 2024, Love Design Studio is promoting its Air Quality service offering, because it is one of the most immediate environmental concerns in the capital and a big silent killer that we want to help fix.
With that in mind, we introduce our very own Air Quality Group Lead: Connor Rusby! (Being interviewed by our Founder, Andy). Connor has a wealth of air quality experience and a keen interest in intersectional environmentalism and environmental justice.
Hi Connor, we are going to kickstart with the big questions first😉
What one policy would you bring in first if you were made Prime Minister?
Free public transport and/or pedestrianisation of all urban centres.
Amen to that! & maybe equally important, what was your favourite album of last year?
Zach Bryan - Zach Bryan
A self-titled-melancholic-red-dust masterpiece, for when I need an americana escape from the big smoke….
Pretentious & on topic, I like it. What are you most looking forward to in 2024?
Professionally, I am most excited to broaden my knowledge and technical capabilities in the wider sustainability offerings – notably, in energy modelling and whole life-cycle carbon analysis. I plan on focussing time and research on how air quality can overlap with these assessments and what the sector can learn from the developments in the whole life carbon sector.
Personally, I am looking to spend more time on photography and building a bigger portfolio of work and forcing it into deliverables where I can.
There is clearly more to you than meets the eye. What made you want to work in the AQ Sector?
I have worked in air quality consultancy since first graduating in 2018. I was drawn to environmental consultancy because I felt my passion for intersectional environmentalism would help drive positive change in the industry and hopefully bring new perspectives on adaptation and mitigation. Whilst this is still a key driver, my early exposure to the built environment and planning sector quickly highlighted just how severe the air quality crisis is in the UK and how critical it should be in decision making.
The air quality crisis requires an immediate response; it is one of the leading causes of early mortality globally, and in the UK and can drastically reduce wellbeing and quality of life. The health effects associated with air pollution are well-documented across academia, with new studies being published each year linking air pollution to an ever-growing range of short term and long-term health issues. In 2016, it was estimated that in the UK alone poor air quality has led to 40, 000 early deaths each year. The built environment has a direct influence on this epidemic, with building emissions worsening local air quality and influencing where people spend their time.
Air quality impacts all facets of human life demonstrated no better than in a recent study, which found babies to have air pollution in their lungs before they take their first breath. Being involved in a sector that so directly impacts people's health and wellbeing motivates me every day and keeps the wood separated from the trees, in the often-muddy waters of planning.
I want to design and improve urban areas and ensure clean air is accessible to all, regardless of class, race or background. I want to hold designers and planners accountable for their design decisions, and how these may directly impact the health and wellbeing of future residents.
I did not know that poor air quality was such a silent killer. How will your experience help the built environment sector improve its record?
I have worked on projects for both the private and public sector, supporting Local Authorities in meeting Local Air Quality Management duties and working with design teams to ensure projects are designed in an air quality positive manner.
I have worked provided air quality expertise across sectors and scopes, leading the delivery of Air Quality chapters within Environmental Impact Assessments for social housing masterplans in North London, to developing an air quality assessment for a Development Consent Order application.
In a previous role, I led an air quality team at a major engineering consultancy, helping to grow the team considerably through the expansion of air quality service offerings, notably around air quality monitoring to support applications. I am passionate about environmental justice and have developed workshops to upskill individuals in understanding environmental racism and injustice.
What motivates you to work in the sector?
We are witnessing a sea change in the understanding of air quality impacts across the wider population and, more importantly, an unprecedented demand for clean air. Planning applications will continue to be considered under the utmost scrutiny and I am proud to work on projects that go above and beyond the expectations and requirements of a standard application, responding to air quality constraints in an innovative manner that puts the health of future site users at the heart of design decisions.
I also think there is huge potential in close collaboration with other working groups, most notably Biodiversity and Energy, to design solutions that are multi-functional and adaptable to our changing climate.
Thank you Connor, insightful, ambitious stuff.