The Built Environment & the Climate

CLIMATE EMERGENCY FUNDAMENTALS

Recorded by Sofie Pelsmakers, images by Essi Nisonen

KEY READINGS 

• IPCC WGII, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/

• IPCC WG III, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/

• Energy, People Buildings: Making Sustainable Architecture Work, Kimpian, J., Hartman, H., Pelsmakers, S., RIBA Publishing

• Pelsmakers, S., The Environmental Design Pocketbook. Riba Publishing

• Designing for the climate emergency, a Guide for Architecture Students, Pelsmakers, S., Donovan, E., Hoggard, A., Kozminska, U., RIBA

THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT & THE CLIMATE

This lecture unfolds more specifically the impact of the built environment on the climate and gives a brief overview of the most important international and EU policies, and voluntary actions and standards and obstacles to their implementation. Each building that is not transformed or constructed to high standards will ‘lock in’ high CO2 emissions for the next decades and will require expensive and disruptive low carbon retrofits in the near future. Hence you need to be ambitious and go beyond minimum regulatory standards to respond to the urgency of the climate crisis. We do not only need high standards in CO2 reductions, but similarly ambitious and high standards in all other aspects of sustainability, i.e. a holistic and restorative sustainable architecture approach. Carbon savings must be achieved for real, not just on paper. Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) and feedback processes are crucial.