Cavendish House is a contemporary addition to the street front of Cavendish Avenue, designed to respect the milieu of (mostly Victorian) detached houses along it. It has a mass timber structure and is divided into two main volumes: a small, shingle-clad and protruding volume emulating the front bays of neighbouring houses, and a main, cuboid volume clad in glass and cement fibre, hosting most of the house’s functions. 

The Organization for Desert Development asked well-known architect Hassan Fathy to design a new agricultural village near the Kharga Oasis after discovering water resources in 1963. Hassan Fathy was known for his low-cost village for agricultural worker families in New Gourna, another pioneering project built 20 years prior. Fathy, who generally attaches importance to creating a strong community with inhabitants in his projects, used architecture as a tool to enable 250 families with no ties to live comfortably in this isolated land. He started his research with demographic, geographical, and climatic data on the land and people in 1963. The construction started in 1964 but was never completed due to the Six-Day War of 1967 and changes in regulations regarding earthen buildings. By then, the administration building, several housing units, the museum and social centre’s outer shell, and the market, which would be the project’s heart, had been built. This project’s constructed parts, drawings, and documentation are critical examples of sustainable architecture for passive cooling and vernacular architecture and are valuable for the sustainability discourse, depending on the context. 

The Heelis Centre is the headquarters of the UK’s largest charity, The National Trust. The brief for the project was to create the most sustainable building possible at the time within the available budget. Named after Beatrix Potter, it houses offices, meeting spaces, and embodies the National Trust’s commitment to conservation and environmental responsibility. 

The Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre was designed to celebrate the vernacular Kanak culture, the indigenous culture of New Caledonia. The complex comprises ten distinct cylindrical structures, reminiscent of traditional Kanak huts, arranged in a spiralling layout across a tropical landscape. The centre houses exhibition spaces, conference rooms, theatres, and workshops, providing a platform for showcasing Kanak art, history, and cultural practices. It also includes outdoor amphitheatres and performance spaces for cultural events and celebrations. 

The architectural language of the centre was inspired by the material culture of the Kanaks and informed by advances in sustainable construction technologies. 

The City of Melbourne posed an ecologically focused design brief for the proposal of Council House 2, often referred to as CH2 or CH2. The project’s goal was to set a sustainable example for Melbourne’s future development projects, as the city had its sights set on carbon neutrality by 2020. It adheres to the then newly launched Green Star rating system, a list of criteria developed by the Australian Green Building Council (GBC), which incorporates aspects from LEED and BREEAM. The project uses biomimicry to perform passively where possible, employing the building’s thermal mass to keep cool, and a reactive façade which helps in shading the interiors. 

'No footprint house' is a toolbox for building low-emission, affordable, and prefabricated houses. It has been realised in several iterations and used as prototypes for improving the toolbox. Here, we are going to discuss the overall development of the toolbox and the first, most well-known prototype in Ojochal. 

With a spiralling landscaped ramp and an array of bioclimatic strategies, the Solaris office building works as an extension of Singapore’s One-North Park, where it is located. According to Singapore’s sustainable building benchmark, Solaris has received the highest rating (platinum). 

The Enterprise centre is a university building that aims to encourage new sustainable businesses coming out of its academic research programme; the building itself is a suitable reflection of the values and ambitions of the university and the activities of The Enterprise centre.

The concept of 2226 is to provide a building with a comfortable range of interior temperatures (22oC to 26oC) without any heating, air conditioning or mechanical ventilation. The temperature range is guaranteed by a combination of thermal mass and natural ventilation, using the heat emitted from the bodies of the users and the office devices as energy sources. The concept has been applied to buildings in different locations and has since become a standalone research and development program within the Baumschlager Eberle practice, but here the focus is on the first example building of the series, built in Lustenau.

The project is an extension of a 1950s office tower in Berlin with a twofold goal: to reconnect the isolated tower with the (current and historical) city fabric and to become a prototype of exemplary energy performance for office buildings. The new connection to context is achieved through a heterogenous composition of volumes that take cues both from the baroque layer of the city (plinth) and from the late modernist layer (slab). The energy performance concept is based on a double skin concept and an aerodynamic ventilation fin at the top of the slab.

The C10 Tower was originally built in the 1960s. In 2008 Staab Architekten undertook the refurbishment and renovation of the building, with a focus on building performance.

The Sanya Mangrove Park project exemplifies a holistic approach to climate change adaptation, addressing the intersection of ENVIRONMENTAL degradation, urban development, and green and blue INFRASTRUCTURE. Situated in Sanya, China’s Hainan Province, the project transforms a former landfill enclosed by concrete flood walls into a thriving mangrove ecosystem and public park. Through innovative design strategies such as interlocking finger-like landforms and terraced landscapes, the project attempts to mitigate the impact of annual tropical monsoon storms and pollution while enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem services. Moreover, its emphasis on public accessibility and community engagement fosters a sense of environmental stewardship and resilience among residents,

Benthemplein water square is a shared public amenity and recreational space, which has been described as the world’s first ‘water square’. It is cleverly designed to attenuate surface water and mitigate against the threat of flooding whilst also providing a dynamic and flexible public amenity space.

Air pollution has become a major issue in urban areas, driven by factors such as fossil-fuelled transport and wood-burning. Air pollution is worst in urban areas due to high concentrations of vehicles and industries. The urban heat island effect, along with wildfires, contributes to poor air quality. In Europe, millions of urban dwellers are exposed to unhealthy air levels, posing severe health risks. But it also harms ecosystems as it damages vegetation and reduces biodiversity. Hence a restorative approach is necessary to protect air quality to safeguard human health, ecosystems, and the planet, and it includes reducing pollution sources, green infrastructure and vegetation in cities but also cleaner vehicles, sustainable mobility and land-use models. Measures like speed limits and well designed streets, car-free zones, and safe walking and cycling routes can contribute to cleaner but also safer, and more equitable urban environments.

Carefully considering land-use and where to develop is a crucial aspect of a climate emergency design approach as it affects biodiversity, permeability of land, air pollution and accessibility and how much infrastructure is needed. Greenfields are essential for biodiversity and have little existing infrastructure and should be avoided for development as they often have better uses. Instead greyfields and brownfields can be restored because they have infrastructures and often existing buildings that can be reused. They are often contaminated so ecological site surveys and bio-remediation are crucial before development. Greyfield development often contributes to urban sprawl, where low density, residential only development ‘locks-in’ car reliance, leading to energy use, pollution alongside habitat loss and fragmentation. Instead you should create mixed-use neighbourhoods (e.g. 15 minute city principles), and strategies such as reuse and adapting existing structures, infill development, backyard filling, attic exchange and roof stacking to help densify cities while preserving green areas. Sustainable densities, walkable neighbourhoods, and shared resources can counteract the negative aspects of densification. For your site selection, ecological value (and protecting existing ecology) and future impact on the community, air, water, and soil should be assessed and key drivers in your site selection and your project design.

Globally, governments agreed to limit global heating to a maximum of 1.5°C rise but we are on track for 2.8°C global heating by 2100 because of insufficiently ambitious policy commitments (or not meeting them). But each fraction of a degree reduced, matters to reduce the severity of the impacts. The effects of climate change include hotter temperatures, the warming and acidification of the oceans, severe storms, increased drought, and a loss of species. Northern Europe is projected to face stronger winter warming, while Southern Europe will experience more severe summer warming. Urban areas face specific risks, with urban heat islands exacerbating extreme temperatures, impermeable ground surfaces increasing flood risk, and a loss of urban green space contributing to the degradation of land and biodiversity. To minimise the impact of climate change on the environment, actions should prioritise:

• protecting and enhancing ecosystems and biodiversity.

• careful land-use decisions that avoid destruction of forests, greenfields and other areas of biodiversity.

• rewilding cities and increasing green and blue infrastructures.

• ensuring a just transition.

All our actions should aim for the best climate future. Even if it is (still) legal to do less than that, we have a moral obligation and responsibility to do better.

Frederiksbjerg School in Aarhus, Denmark, aligns with the principles outlined in the 2013 Danish school reform. The school supports dynamic learning through movement and sensory exploration while emphasising openness and community spirit. The school has become a central hub for local children and youth. This deliberate design fosters individual and community wellbeing and nurtures a strong sense of togetherness among students.

Reducing embodied energy and embodied carbon and addressing the wider environmental impacts of construction materials is vital in designing for the climate emergency. Urgent action is required to achieve substantial reductions in embodied carbon, aiming for as much as 97-99%. This can only be achieved by strategies that involve re-using buildings, avoiding their demolition and using reclaimed materials, i.e. part of a circular economy approach, and designing from ‘cradle to cradle’, accounting for the material's entire life cycle, including disassembly and reuse. Buildings that act as material resource banks challenges the linear and ‘cradle to grave’ approach that currently exists in the construction industry.

Other strategies include avoiding concrete and steel and other high embodied-carbon materials; instead use low energy materials, and low-carbon materials that are produced by renewable energy; localise where sensible; use plant-based materials that can be carbon negative and act as a carbon sink (i.e., biogenic materials that absorb more CO2 than they release like timber). Early on in the design process, undertake embodied carbon and life-cycle analysis (LCA) to compare options and help your design decision-making process – there are simple tools you an use. Do not just consider energy and carbon but all other impacts (e.g. biodiversity, water pollution, health and well-being etc.).

Good design can encourage a more sustainable, healthier lifestyle, also reducing energy use and CO2 and local pollution. For example, green and shared infrastructures promote social and physical activity and active lifestyles (e.g. taking stairs, good public transport/walking and cycling connectivity), also lead to lower energy use. The way people use buildings dramatically influences their energy consumption, and hence also affects a building’s carbon footprint. But behaviour is usually not accounted for in predictive energy models, yet this is essential to understand so that we achieve energy and CO2 reductions in reality. Smart technology systems are increasingly developed but are still in early stages and they do not always reduce energy use and CO2 , and they risk excluding people.

To ensure that systems and the building work as intended and that user needs are met and low energy lifestyles are supported in reality, you need to undertake an inclusive and democratic design process with users and different stakeholders, focus on user experiences and user friendliness, and that you obtain performance feedback post-competition. This holistic approach is key to promoting low-energy, sustainable living.

While these are real-life project processes, as a student you can create a democratic design plan, a Performance Risk Plan and user or care and maintenance manuals.

The building's carbon footprint is the total carbon emissions emitted over its lifetime and can be reduced by creating a carbon handprint. The carbon footprint includes emissions from energy use (operational carbon) and materials (embodied carbon); this talk focuses on operational carbon. When a handprint and footprint are equal, your project is carbon neutral. If the handprint surpasses the footprint, it becomes climate positive, going beyond neutrality to reduce past damage (i.e. restorative action).

As a student (and architect in practice) you can use simplified operational carbon estimation rules of thumb like those in this talk to understand the carbon impact of the energy needs. Make sure you use country-specific and up to date benchmarks and carbon intensity factors for different fuels.

Understanding the carbon implications of your design and the aimed for standards is crucial part of climate emergency design, as it enables you to refine your work and aim higher. This then allows you to review whether the energy needs can be reduced further through, for example passive resilience measures, such as increased airtightness and insulation, good daylight, solar (shading) design, purge ventilation etc.

But also ensure that you understand user needs, design user friendly systems, and if a real project to check that systems work as intended to ensure carbon emissions are reduced in reality and as expected (create a democratic design plan and Performance Risk Plan).