Duncan Baker-Brown runs a small regional practice in Cooksbridge, just north of Lewes in East Sussex and splits his work time between his business and a teaching job at the University of Brighton. His earliest direct contact with RIBA came in an unconventional form early in his career when he and fellow students staged an occupation of the Portland Place HQ building in around 1987. “I was part of a student group that were protesting against plans to close three schools of architecture should be closed”, he explains. “But that was more than 30 years ago.”

Things have moved on, and if Baker-Brown has perhaps mellowed, he still retains a strong streak of his early campaigning zeal. Since winning a RIBA 1994 House of the Future competition, with a design for a sustainable dwelling, Baker-Brown has been one of the leading advocates for low-carbon architecture and retrofit - the course he runs at Brighton has been teaching young architects how to reuse existing buildings for the last 20 years.

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