Climate change is one of the most critical and complex challenges facing communities worldwide. Recent reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continue to emphasize both the role played by the built environment in causing climate change, as well as the considerable potential offered by innovative and forward-looking designs of systems, buildings, and cities in achieving the dual objectives of climate change mitigation and adaptation.Footnote1 Effective responses to climate change are not limited to those addressing the environmental performance of buildings and communities. We must also understand the socioeconomic, cultural, and political performances associated with these buildings and communities. These responses need to extend beyond individual solutions and identify the needed systemic changes in education and practice, which will allow for achieving the large-scale impacts required to effectively meet the current magnitude of the climate challenges we face.
This issue of Technology | Architecture + and Design (TAD) aims to better define the roles of architecture, design, and technology in meeting the challenges facing our communities from current and forecasted changes in climate, as well as to explore how we can prepare for extreme climate conditions. The issue provides an overview of the complex nature of the challenges posed by climate change and the possible solutions. It does so both from the point of view of architectural researchers, educators, and scholars, as well as from the perspective of the other disciplines involved. The solicited work in TAD: Climate aims to better understand the role of architecture, architectural education, and the architectural profession in charting a course toward a future where the built environment can be transformed from being part of the problem to the solution.
The issue’s Op-Position articles investigate the complexities of climate and the built environment from various perspectives. Thomas Fisher explores the future of the built environment in a post-pandemic climate and how some of the forecasted changes resulting from the pandemic can help mitigate the challenges of climate change. Reflecting on the impacts of previous pandemics, such as the 1918 influenza pandemic, Fisher describes a post-COVID environment in which advanced communication technologies will increase the percentage of employees working remotely. This effect, according to Fisher, will not only have a positive impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions but will also provide architects and building owners with the opportunity to reimagine their property for alternative purposes, from affordable housing to light-industrial production to aquaponic agriculture. Fisher identifies similar opportunities for reimagining the role and design of university campuses and the structure of educational programs. He contends that this reimagining can increase affordability and allow more access to those programs. In another article, William Braham examines current architectural education programs and asks if focusing architectural curricula on buildings is still a promising approach in the context of climate change. Braham proposes that building-centric approaches to climate challenges, such as reducing embodied carbon at the building scale, may not offer the needed impacts on global supply chains. Braham proposes that for architectural education to address the challenges of the climate emergency, programs need to work at three interconnected scales: 1) urban self-organization, in which the city is viewed as a system and buildings are understood as intensifications of their relative location within the city; 2) building design and operation, in which building science is understood as part of architectural knowledge that belongs to design studios; and 3) materials and products, in which upstream carbon embodied in the materials and construction methods is tracked with increasing accuracy.
Understanding the causes and consequences of climate change and possible system-wide solutions requires us to look at the problem through multiple disciplinary lenses. The issue’s third Op-Position article explores this through interviews with three experts outside our discipline. These experts were asked to reflect on the main challenges posed by climate change and their possible solutions. They were also asked to reflect on the built environment and architects’ roles. Through the lens of an ecological engineer, Marty Matlock discusses the need for increasing hydrologic security and developing more thermal refuge strategies for large populations. Pedar Ankar focuses on the need to address climate change on a political rather than a personal level and emphasizes the importance of education. Malkit Shoshan notes the historical effects of colonization and continuous resource extraction and emphasizes the role of design in developing effective solutions to the climate emergency.
Integrating research into architectural practice can have a major positive role in changing the negative impact of the built environment into a positive one. In the research methodology article, Anya Domlesky, from SWA Group, introduces the XL Lab as a model of practice-based research. Domlesky describes the lab’s definition of architectural research as “systematic inquiry directed towards the creation of knowledge.” She then shares the genesis of the lab within the firm and its current focus on producing the necessary tools and information rather than looking for it. Finally, she identifies four methodological approaches, or categories, for the projects undertaken by the lab: foresight projects, projects that analyze the impacts of built work, visualization and simulation projects, and topical and advocacy projects. Domlesky’s model offers an excellent case study for effectively integrating research into architectural practice.
In another perspective from the profession, Simon Cross and Duncan Cox, from Thornton Tomasetti, use the Details + article to introduce how The Greater London Assembly (GLA) building has implemented a bold plan for achieving net zero carbon by 2030, including ambitious standards for reducing building emissions. Cross and Cox contend that, when completed, the building’s embodied carbon will represent a substantial reduction from the GLA’s established baseline for residential buildings. Peter Aeschbacher’s review of Elke Mertens’ book Resilient City: Landscape Architecture for Climate Change expands the discussion into the role of landscape architecture and urban design. Aeschbacher describes Mertens’ book as “an equal parts Grand Tour travelogue, an assemblage of design relics, and a manifesto” that can inform architecture’s future. He however questions whether the collection of discoveries included in the book will usher in the needed productive synthesis, namely the resilient city. Pravin Bhiwapurkar’s review of Paul Hawken’s Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation argues that the book provides an understanding of interconnected systems and actionable resources to inform design decision-making. Bhiwapurkar describes how Hawken’s book highlights the role of agencies for collective action and global collaboration to end the climate crisis. He concludes that the book is valuable for establishing climate crisis agencies.
The solicited articles within this issue provide a wide range of views representing the varied approaches, scales, and disciplinary perspectives necessary to understand the complex challenges that climate change represents and the role that architecture and architectural education play. Hopefully, this will offer a positive contribution to the interdisciplinary efforts needed to tackle this massive challenge that defines our generation.
Notes
1. IPCC, 2022: Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. P. R. Shukla et al. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022).