Sustainable design and technology research workshop

Lectures: 1 sessions / week, 3 hours / session

The workshop welcomes students from different disciplines that focus upon the design and technological issues related to the development of the built environment.

The intention is to explore and speculate upon current interpretations of sustainability in and around architecture and urban design, in the broadest sense - from the micro level of materials and technology, through the scale of the building, to the macro scale of urban form and suburbanization. We will be interested in looking at not only how the notion of sustainable architecture is conceptualized, interpreted and implemented at varying scales, but also how we might push the frontiers of knowledge toward new directions and dimensions. These new dimensions should challenge us to be conscious of resource use, ecological balance and minimizing environmental impacts in professional design work and technological applications.

The workshop will be interdisciplinary and collaborative in nature and will develop as a forum where students and faculty will engage both in investigative analysis as well as design studies of a speculative nature. The intention will be to produce work of a publishable quality that can then educate and inform a wider professional community.

The workshop will be structured around three interrelated phases. We will begin by looking at current interpretations of sustainability in architecture from literature, publications, professional practice and assessment methods with a view to developing some critical edge to the upcoming work of the class. Secondly, we will engage in holistic and critical research of a range of chosen projects through the study of their underlying objectives and ideas as well as the resultant problems and issues. For example, a group may do a critical analysis of a new building or urban development that has been critically acclaimed to be very sustainable. Finally (and for the second half of the semester), students will select their own design project which will become the vehicle to articulate and evaluate either totally new ideas and agendas for a sustainable future, or to revisit familiar problems but with a new vision and understanding of the environmental potential.

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