ROUNDTABLE 06

The Built Environment education and practice for climate resilience and action: tools, capacities and challenges

 Organizers :  

• Ceren Sezer, RWTH Aachen University
• Eugenio Morello, Politecnico di Milano

Speakers:  

• Christa Reicher, RWTH Aachen University
• Francesco Musco, IUAV
• Chrisna Du Plessis, University of Pretoria
• Matej Niksic, Urban Planning Institute of Republic of SloveniaMiriam Jensen
• Tijana Dabovic, University of Belgrade

Climate change has become an indisputable fact of life in the 21st century. The cities significantly contribute to global warming, but they also offer solutions for climate Change through mitigation and adaptation strategies. The built environment disciplines, including architecture and urban planning, have developed a range of measures to address the contribution of the built environment to climate change and captured these in a range of toolkits and rating systems. However, these practices and principles are often only tangentially introduced into highereducation and the professional sphere, resulting in the continued relegation of sustainable, resilient and climate-adaptive design to an area of specialisation instead of core praxis. The focus on promoting certifications and adaptation measures that represent mere adjustments to existing urban and architectural design approaches further fails to bring about fundamental shifts in how design thinking is conducted. In some instances, this may lead to a superficial "greenwashing" attitude rather than a radical and genuine commitment to sustainable and resilient design and planning practices.

This roundtable offers dialogue with scholars, educators, and practitioners on adopting creative learning strategies in built environment education and practice to develop capacities to address the climate crisis. The main questions of this session include: What are the institutional, organisational and other existing barriers to address climate
change within the built environment education and practice? What are the required skills to incorporate climate change action toolkits, guidelines, and approaches into built environment education curricula?

This roundtable is a follow-up event of the Climate Wunderkammer project featured during the 18th Architecture Biennale in Venice between May 20 and November 26, 2023.