Climate Change 2019
For five hours on Friday 3rd May 2019 TU Dublin’s Architecture students and academic staff met to discuss and seek to address, through their five year Bachelor of Architecture programme (of 300 students), issues being highlighted through the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The aim of the student-staff integrated workshop was threefold.
- Within the current core Architectural Design Studio modules, to agree what specific topics might be taken on board that can be identified with specific SDG targets and indicators[1].
- To give students a voice in the design of their curriculum through facilitated co-creation.
- With activities in Linenhall, to explore ideas of how the building’s users could be encouraged to establish more sustainable use of materials, reduce waste, and occupy the building as sustainably as possible in its daily use, guided by Green Campus[2] and STARS[3] frameworks.
Groups included lecturers from across the Dublin School of Architecture’s programmes. A vertical project approach was used in mixing students across the 5 years during the brainstorming session. External guests such at the Director of Education at the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, Architects from private practice and SEAI participated. The agenda for the day was for students and lecturers to work together in three separate brainstorming sessions:-- to agree priority topics within each of the 5 years in Architectural Design Studio- to propose project typologies to explore these topics through- to propose how successful design solutions will be evaluation and assessed
After each brainstorm, year groups reported their findings to the larger programme for discussion with all outcomes captured live.Overarching conclusions of the workshop included
- On modules, a multidisciplinary input is needed, from lecturers and students through joint projects from other disciplines, with definitions of what sustainable design being debated and defined (with reference to areas like ecologically, sociologically, etc.) within architecture, along with issues like good design vs applied technology being addressed.
- On projects, if we must build, then the reuse of existing buildings and sites is most sustainable. Project assessment criteria and feedback during crits from lecturers and guest critics need to be directly aligned and linked to sustainable development goal indicators / climate change agenda measures. Carbon costing and life cycle analysis measures and analysis are key.
- On facilities, there is an interest to set up a Green Campus Working Group for Linenhall, as a sub-committee of the DSA House Committee and in liaison with TU Dublin’s Green Campus Committees. The aim of the group is to use our teaching facility as a test bed for interventions to be employed for TU Dublin and beyond. The Working Group would aim to make Linenhall a more sustainable building, both in the performance of the building, and the behaviours of its users. The impacts of any proposed interventions must be measured.
DSA Vertical Project Climate Change 2019
DSA CLIMATE CAMP Project Brief
For more details please contact Jennifer Boyer, Assistant Head of School (Architecture), Dublin School of Architecture
jennifer.boyer@tudublin.ie[1] Within the 17 SDGs there 232 indicators aligned to the 169 targets. For an example see https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg11. Note how each indicator is a number.