Design for Climate Action

Live Event: Design for Climate Action: AIA – ACSA Intersections Symposium 2020

Take Action to address climate and the built environment AND earn HSW credit! Join us live, July 28 and 29, 4:00-5:30 pm ET, for Design for Climate Action: Intersections Symposium. Each session will share important research, which Intersects Practice and Academia, and can lead to new ways of addressing the critical issues of climate change.

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Description

Selected from more than 120 blind, peer-reviewed projects, the eight projects featured in this symposium have been curated by our Co-Chairs, Phoebe Crisman, AIA, and Kyle Konis, AIA into dynamic, 90-minute sessions. Each session will feature important findings, presented in brief PPT presentations, followed by a moderated discussion and audience Q&A.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020 4:00-5:30 pm (EDT)

Achieving Climate Action through Practice, Academia, & Policy

Join us and see how COLLABORATION and REENVISIONING across practice, academia, community, and government can be part of the answer to climate change. Ashlie Latiolais, AIA, shares her work in New Iberia, LA. She suggests new modes and methods of architectural practice and education to inspire a new generation of architects to re-imagine conventional deliverables in architectural community work. Richard Mohler, AIA, describes the climate and social equity challenges created by single-family zoning. He shares the results from a collaboration of his University of Washington design studio, AIA Seattle, and city government to revise public policy to be more aligned with the city’s climate and social equity goals. Designer Sasha Plotnikova illustrates how designing for de-growth presents an alternative model to conventional US urban development practices. She gives architects a way to help foster and realize community-based visions of equitable development that is also climate-responsive design. Ann Yoachim shares the work of Tulane’s community design center as a case study. Increased intensity of weather events and failing infrastructure have resulted in regular flooding of streets, homes, and businesses (including the center itself). Responding to immediate needs and planning for potential climate futures are often in conflict, so an engaged design process, related and unique projects, and research offer architecture practice and education an opportunity to respond. Join us for a lively discussion developing effective changes in practice, policy, and education, to realize climate action.

Learning objectives

  • Learn how to plant the seeds that blossom into stronger, more sustainable communities. Identify new techniques to respond to the current ecological crises and educate and train (future and current) architects to design buildings that co-exist with the environment, in improved ways from those that have formed the basis of the current environmental emergency.
  • Explore new modes and methods of inquiry and architectural practice to re-imagine and create environments that are socially equitable and ecologically sustainable. Create work (projects and research) that contributes directly to the greater public understanding of the role and value of professional architects.
  • Understand how outside influences can impact projects and how to stay aware to prevent unintended consequences that negatively impact our environment, our project, and our quality of life. Learn how to advance climate action and environmental stewardship through advising elected officials in revising public policy to be more aligned with climate and social equity goals necessary to address the magnitude of ecological, social, and economic challenges we face.
  • Learn how collaboration with clients, community members, stakeholders, and multiple expert groups can facilitate the design and planning process as well as educate and create capacity within the community to advocate for climate action and improved quality of life for all.

Wednesday, July 29, 4:00-5:30 pm (EDT)

Designing Across Scales for Climate Action

Today, designers are tackling climate action across a range of scales. Learn about four projects that address material exploration, buildings and systems, landscapes and habitats, and infrastructure. The Pulp studio, by Stephanie Davidson, uses recycled cellulose-based materials to cast temporary, biodegradable, thin-shell structures. She asks designers to see materials as responsive, constantly transforming, and asks them to consider where materials come from and where they end up, when making design decisions. The Pollinators Pavilion by architect Ariane Harrison seeks a larger role for architecture in environmental activism and focuses on biodiversity conservation and materials exploration. She uses artificial intelligence and automated scientific monitoring strategies to create and analyze habitat systems and increase building awareness. Award-winning Salty Urbanism presented by Jeffrey Huber, AIA, features projects in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and Venice, California. These projects use coastal-hazard adaptation approaches and a design framework for urban areas to address economic, engineering, environmental, and quality of life issues. Finally, landscape architect Zaneta Hong’s studio research demonstrates how changes in agricultural practices and food systems could address growing global populations and impact climate change, while defining roles of architects and designers in transforming future landscapes and material systems.

Learning objectives

  • Discover multiple ways to collaboratively address climate change and positively impact the public’s health, safety, and welfare, through innovative design and materials development that address water and storm water management, materials, and species extinction.
  • Learn ways that artificial intelligence technology impacts architecture and can improve our ability to design more resilient and sustainable ecosystems.
  • Discover new tools and design methodologies, using a multi-scale approach, that helps connect segregated disciplines, such as urban planning and environmental engineering with architecture, to meet complex challenges of urban development and water rise, while also generating action between bottom-up design thinking and top-down policy and planning.
  • Discover how we should be planning and designing today for our future global needs. Understand why mindful building processes, handling of resources (including material decisions), and awareness of our impact on the environment are critical to climate action. Action must begin now so that climate action successfully makes its way further into the construction industry’s education and practice.

Turning Inspiration into Climate Action

Posted on by cguske

On March 4, VMDO’s Sustainability Working Group sat brainstorming ways to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. We had the momentum of the Fridays for Future Movement, the AIA had dedicated itself to climate issues through “the Big Move,” Democratic presidential candidates were debating who could be the most transformative on climate action, and a sea change was happening in the Virginia State Legislature – the clean energy transition that had seemed almost impossible a year ago was being set in motion by the House of Delegates. It was (and still is) an amazing time to celebrate the birth of the environmental movement.

Then COVID-19 happened, and life as we knew it completely changed.

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