Ian Abley

Ian Abley is a qualified architect with a long CV and extensive practical experience. He is currently undertaking research for an EngD on the subject of “Improving the efficiency of the UK masonry construction sector”. While his day job has been as a detailer and site architect, Ian has a track record of research and publication. Following the conference Building Audacity he edited Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age (Wiley-Academy, 2001) as a collection of essays concerned with change in the construction industry. With Professor James Woudhuysen of De Montfort University in Leicester he was then co-author of Why is construction so backward? (Wiley, 2004), and Homes 2016 (Blueprint Broadsides, 2004). He has recently co-edited Manmade Modular Megastructures (AD magazine, January/February 2006), occasionally writes for Building Magazine, and is starting a regular column in Construction Manager.

With his wife Kate Abley he runs audacity, a campaigning company that advocates developing the man-made environment. audacity organises authoritative international research, large conferences, a provocative website and a dynamic school of writers, public speakers and photographers.

Ian Abley was on the panel at The Great Megastructures Debate at Discovery Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne on 15 March 2007 and is on the panel of Engineering the Future at the one day workshop Facing the Future on 5 November 2011.