Join us for our November Green Cafe, with speaker Nicholas Temple. Chat over refreshments 10.30-11 and then hear Nicholas’ talk 11-12.15pm on What does it mean to stand for the natural world in an age of crisis? (More details below).

This is a free event, all welcome. Available throughout the morning: recycling box for blister packs and a bag for used toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes and our thermal imaging camera for seeking out those draughty places in need of insulation to help cut your energy bills.

Nicholas’ presentation

Nicholas explores the complex relationship between nature, violence, and courage while asking how environmental and socio-political upheavals are reshaping our sense of solidarity and responsibility.

Part of his wider project Nature Transformed: Erosion and Recovery of Solidarity, which is currently under consideration for Bloomsbury’s Environmental Cultures series, this talk weaves together years of research with urgent questions for today. This talk draws on many of the themes from his previous research, but focuses primarily on the current environmental and socio-political crises we are facing. Nicholas invites us to look unflinchingly at the forces that threaten our shared future, and to consider the acts of courage, both large and small, that might help us reclaim it.

This is a space for anyone who believes that ideas can inspire action, since facing hard truths together is the first step towards meaningful change.

About Nicholas

Nicholas Temple is an Australian academic living in Settle in North Yorkshire. He is currently a fractional senior professor in architectural history at London Metropolitan University, and has previously held academic positions at the University of Pennsylvania (USA), Liverpool University, Nottingham University and Huddersfield University.

Nicholas has researched and published widely on matters relating to the history, culture and representation of architecture and the city, including the following books The Temporality of Building: European and Chinese Perspectives on Architecture and Heritage (2025); Architecture and the Language Debate: Artistic and Linguistic Exchanges in Early Modern Italy (2020); Renovatio Urbis: Architecture, Urbanism and Ceremony in the Rome of Julius II (2011) and Disclosing Horizons: Architecture, Perspective and Redemptive Space (2007).