This history and theory seminar aims to equip students with a multifaceted understanding of key challenges and opportunities in designing climate-sensitive architecture in the 21st century, in view of the instabilities brought about by climate change and other human-inflicted disruptions to our planet’s ecosystems. It demonstrates how creative design ideas and applications can arise from cross-cultural pollination. To do so, the lectures, readings and student research draw on both vernacular buildings and authored case studies and theories in an array of contexts, diverse cultures living within a range of climates on all continents. The seminar’s theoretical premise is that architecture and climate have always affected one-another, even if the awareness of architecture’s effects on climate change is recent. The seminar therefore focuses on architect’s role within a design team as one that assesses and integrates quantifiable parameters for climatic performance through a qualitative socio-cultural lens. The seminar’s method is topical rather than historical. Each topic is presented from several facets, often with diverging views and motives. Each class is divided into a topical lecture and a students’ presentation and discussion of the characteristics of one climate region and its architectural challenges. In preparation of discussions students read and write critical responses. As a term project, students research and compare case studies, and present them graphically and verbally. The seminar is open to all graduate architecture students. The course is a core requirement for the MSD-EBD degree.
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