The Safer Sustainable Cities event was held in the Grand Reading Room in the Welsh School of Architecture and Glass, Swansea (curated by Gamman and Thorpe, with help from freelance designer, Chris Thomas) The event was requested by colleagues from the Crime Prevention community in Wales as ambitious regeneration projects are planned in Swansea, and inspiration and knowledge transfer to make design against bike crime happen was thought to be needed linked to aims to increase cycle use as part of integrated public transport proposals. The event focused on the contribution of designing out crime to the creation of safer, sustainable cities and was attended by 50 delegates, from local authorities, police, and academic bodies from England and Wales. The conference received presentations drawing on Bikeoff research from Ekblom, Gamman, Thorpe, Sidebottom and Willcocks.
The event was met with a very positive response and was reported in THE Times Higher Education.

Tags: Adam Thorpe, Bikeoff Outputs, Chris Thomas, Fighting Crime With Good Design, Lorraine Gamman, SMU, Swansea Metropolitan University, Wales
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8th European Society of Criminology Conference. Edinburgh, Scotland, September 2008

Aiden Sidebottom, Adam Thorpe and Shane Johnson of Bikeoff were invited to present at the eighth European Society of Criminology conference which was held at the University of Edinburgh. This paper presented findings from the recent evaluation of two design-based interventions intended to reduce opportunities for bicycle theft: a communication-based strategy in the form of stickers attached to bicycle parking stands, and prototype bicycle parking stands. The paper opens by describing the problem of bicycle theft and its relevance to current policy targets regarding sustainable transport. Following the description of the two design-based interventions, findings are presented from the evaluations of their impact of intervention on cyclists locking practice. Finally, the implications of the findings for further research are discussed.

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Tags: Adam Thorpe, Aiden Sidebottom, Bikeoff Outputs, Shane Johnson
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American Society of Criminology Annual Conference.  St Louis, USA. November 2008.

Lorraine Gamman, Shane Johnson, Aiden Sidebottom and Adam Thorpe of Bikeoff were invited to present the poster Design Against Crime: Reducing the Risk of Bicycle Theft  at this conference.
The American Society of Criminology annual 2009 meeting, held in St. Louis, Missouri, featured sessions on evidence-based crime prevention, corporate crime prevention, violence and animal cruelty, school-based crime prevention and innovative approaches to crime prevention. Poster sessions were intended to present research in a format that is easy to scan and absorb quickly and was designed to facilitate more in-depth discussion of the research than is typically possible in a symposium format. The ‘Design Against Crime: Reducing the Risk of Bicycle Theft’ poster looked at recent research findings emanating from the BikeOff 2 project which aimed to better understand how cyclists lock their bicycles in public spaces and if targeted design-based interventions can reduce the likelihood of theft.

Download poster here

Tags: 2008, Adam Thorpe, Aiden Sidebottom, Bikeoff Outputs, Lorraine Gamman, presentations, Shane Johnson
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RIBA’s Building Futures – Conflict Debate event, June 2008.

Lorraine Gamman and Adam Thorpe of Bikeoff were guest speakers at RIBA’s Building Futures – Conflict Debate event. They presented Design Against Paranoid Cities or Socially Responsive Design for Public Spaces. Building Futures aims to address the big picture. How and where will we be living in 50 or 100 years’ time, when the climate has changed and cities are bigger than ever? What technologies will architects be using to design buildings and what new materials will they be specifying? Lorraine Gamman and Adam Thorpe of Bikeoff were guest speakers at RIBA’s Building Futures – Conflict Debate event. They presented Design Against Paranoid Cities or Socially Responsive Design for Public Spaces.

Download presentation here

Listen to presentation here

Tags: Adam Thorpe, Bikeoff Outputs, Lorraine Gamman, presentations
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Changing the Change Conference, Turin. July 2008.

The conference seeks to make a significant contribution to a necessary transformation that involves changing the direction of current changes toward a sustainable future. It specifically intends to outline the state-of-the-art of design research in terms of visions, proposals and tools with which design can actively and positively take part in the wider social learning process that will have to take place. Lorraine Gamman and Adam Thorpe were invited to present the paper Less is More – What Design Against Crime Can Contribute To Sustainability at the conference. The paper argues that design against crime constitutes sustainable design because it attempts to anticipate and design out crime and other problems from the system in the first place, in a sustainable way, rather than solving them after they have arisen, often linked to inconsiderate design. It is written in seven sections that attempt to argue with Paul Cozens that “the ubiquitous issue of crime and the fear of crime are included within some sustainability frameworks, but arguably need to be explicitly integrated” (Cozens 2007, 187-196). www.changingthechange.org/

Download presentation here

Tags: Adam Thorpe, Bikeoff Outputs, Lorraine Gamman, presentations
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Designing Out Crime Association (DOCA) AGM, Birmingham November 2008.

Prof. Lorraine Gamman of Bikeoff is also the Vice Chair of DOCA and curated an event presented at the recent AGM
The aim of DOCA is to provide a forum for Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) professionals and practitioners to promote safer communities and reduce anti-social behaviour by improving the quality of life through the concept, application and practice of designing out crime. . Gamman presented Less Is More: What Design Against Crime Can Contribute to Sustainability and will create a BRE (Building Research Establishment) journal with Dr Rachel Armitage based on the papers presented that day for DOCA. Adam Thorpe, Director of Bikeoff, presented Putting the Brakes on Bike Theft.

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Tags: Adam Thorpe, Bikeoff Outputs, Lorraine Gamman, presentations
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An exhibition as part of the London Bicycle Film Festival, to accompany a multi stakeholder seminar aimed at disseminating Bikeoff project outputs and designing out bike theft. The exhibition launched a free online design resource (via Bikeoff.org) featuring over a hundred case studies of cycling facilities and schemes from around the world, aimed at helping a multi stakeholder audience, including designers and architects, to  “get smart quick” about bike theft and how to design secure cycling infrastructure for our cities. Further iterations of the exhibition, including new materials such as videos of interviews with designers upgraded visual materials, were shown at New London Architecture (6 weeks), and the Central Saint Martins innovation Centre Gallery (4 weeks). Some of the images from this exhibition have recently been included in an Australia exhibition curated by Paul Cozens at Curtin University.  Melbourne, Australia.

Tags: Adam Thorpe, Barbican Centre, Bikeoff Outputs, Exhibitions & Events, Lorraine Gamman
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Putting the Brakes on Bicycle Theft (September 2008 and February 2009) Innovation Centre Gallery, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London.
Curators: Gamman, L. and Thorpe, A.

Exhibition showcasing bike parking designs that makes life easier for cyclists and harder for bike thieves, redesigned for the Gallery Space at the Innovation Centre to coincide with Central Saint Martins enterprise events.

Tags: Adam Thorpe, Bikeoff Outputs, Exhibitions & Events, Innovation Centre, Lorraine Gamman
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Putting the Brakes on Bicycle Theft (December 2008 – January 2009) New London Architecture
Curators: Gamman, L. and Thorpe, A.

An exhibition featuring many of the original exhibits shown at the Barbican Centre, re-contextualised and redesigned for New London Architecture, aimed at an architectural audience, was displayed for 6 weeks showcasing bike parking designs that make life easier for cyclists and harder for bike thieves. New work created for this event included upgraded visual material and a video installation of designers talking about their designs.


– Design Exemplars for Secure Cycling exhibition catalogue
Gamman, L. and Thorpe, A. (2008) Putting the Brakes on Bicycle Theft

This catalogue accompanied the “Putting the Brakes on Bicycle Theft 2” exhibition, created for New London Architecture, which showcased new bike parking design that make life easier for cyclists and harder for bike thieves. It also presented Bikeoff.org’s open access online design resource which aims to help a multi agency audience including architects to “get smart quick” about bike theft and innovate secure cycling infrastructure for our cities.

Download here

Tags: 2008, Adam Thorpe, Bikeoff Outputs, Exhibitions & Events, Lorraine Gamman, New London Architecture
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Designs Against Crime (January 2008) Exhibition at the Home Office, Marsham Street, London.
Curators: Gamman, L. and Thorpe, A.

The Home Office’s Acquisitive Crime Unit – who are partly responsible for the formation of the Design Technology Alliance, asked DACRC to create an exhibition aimed at a diverse stakeholder group who the Home Office have targeted to Design Out Crime. The Design Against Crime Research Centre’s DAC product exemplars, including those from the Bikeoff project, formed part of this exhibition. The leaflet announcing the formation of the DTA (originally created for the Truman Brewery event) was also circulated at this brief installation at the Home Office.

Tags: Adam Thorpe, Bikeoff Outputs, Exhibitions & Events, Home Office, Lorraine Gamman
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