The first CASE Open Lecture of the year will be given by Professor Rohinton Emmanuel, with his talk titled, ‘Architectural education in a time of climate emergency: thoughts on key challenges and future directions’ on Tuesday 15 October at 6pm in Marlowe Lecture Theatre 1.
We live in a rapidly warming world with limited time for corrective action. The contribution of built environment to the problem of climate change is considerable but many of the low-hanging fruits of actions to mitigate it are also found within the built environment, especially in cities.Based on my own world view of higher education in the 21st Century I propose to explore the key challenges facing university education at present and enumerate the architectural educational responses needed urgently to address the climate emergency. We will explore a set of initial ideas to transform architectural education to be fit-for-purpose to face this challenge and put forward ideas to move forward to a climate-sensitive design future.
Rohinton Emmanuel is Professor of Sustainable Design and Construction and Director, Research Centre for Built Environment Asset Management (BEAM) at Glasgow Caledonian University. He pioneered the inquiry of urban heat island studies in warm regions and has taught and consulted on climate and environment sensitive design, building and urban sustainability and its assessment, building energy efficiency, thermal comfort and carbon in the built environment. Rohinton was the Secretary of the largest group of urban climate researchers, the International Association for Urban Climate (2010-2013) and was a member of the Expert Team on Urban and Building Climatology (ET 4.4) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as well as the CIB Working Group (W108) on “Buildings and Climate Change.” He has also worked as a green building consultant (LEED certification) and has authored over 150 research publications, including An Urban Approach to Climate Sensitive Design (E&FN Spon Press, 2005), Carbon Management in the Built Environment (Routledge, 2012), Critical Concepts in Built Environment: Sustainable Buildings (Routledge, 2014) and Urban Climate Challenges in the Tropics (Imperial College Press, 2016).
He is currently the Coordinator of an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree Programme on urban climate and sustainability, MUrCS, as well as a Co-Investigator of a H2020 Project (OPERANDUM) on nature-based solutions to mitigate hydro-meteorological risks.