Building cooperatives are collaborative housing that involves individuals or families teaming up to collectively plan, finance, and oversee the construction or renovation of residential buildings. This housing model emphasises communal decision-making, shared ownership, and affordability, offering a valuable and sustainable approach to urban development. It promotes social cohesion and a strong sense of community. Members of these cooperatives actively participate in the design and decision-making process, fostering a shared sense of responsibility and a collaborative living environment that, in turn, nurtures a supportive and closely-knit community.

Thermal comfort, within the context of health and well-being, fo-cuses on creating indoor environments that maintain a tempera-ture range and air quality conducive to the physical and psycho-logical well-being of occupants. The goal is to design spaces that prevent occupants from feeling too hot or too cold while ensuring suitable humidity levels and air circulation to support overall com-fort. This aspect is crucial as it directly impacts the physical health of individuals. Maintaining a comfortable temperature range helps prevent discomfort, heat stress, or cold-related illnesses and contributes to better sleep quality and overall physical well-being. Furthermore, thermal comfort significantly influences men-tal and emotional health. Occupants in spaces that provide com-fortable thermal conditions are less likely to experience stress, irritability, or anxiety related to temperature extremes, creating a positive and productive environment.

Social infrastructure encourages the connection and coming together of people and this includes formal and informal public & private spaces and places that provide opportunities for people to interact with each other in their everyday lives. Social infrastructures supports the building of social capital in the community; this in turn reduces conflict and increases trust, care, connection and feelings of safety. This helps to build individual and community resilience and health and well-being. In your project, always consider what kind of spaces can bring people together from different walks of life and how you can create links with the existing communities. Be careful to impact the existing social spheres positively and not negatively i.e. restorative actions. Ensure that the social infrastructure you suggest answers to the needs of people and are adaptable to their changing needs in the future, otherwise they will not meet needs and remain unused – so undertake inclusive and democratic processes. Always prioritise inclusion of social infrastructure in each and every project, including retrofitting of social infrastructure as the societal, community and individual benefits are significant.

Democratic processes in architecture refer to the incorporation of democratic principles and mechanisms into the design and planning of built environments. This approach ensures that urban spaces and communities are shaped with the input and engagement of a broad range of stakeholders, including residents, local communities, and other relevant parties. By adopting democratic processes, architects, urban planners, and policymakers aim to create more inclusive, responsive, and accountable environments. These processes are rooted in the principles of fairness, equity, and transparency, ensuring that decision-making is not confined to a select few but includes the voices and perspectives of all those affected. This fosters a sense of shared ownership, community engagement, and trust in the planning and development process.

Participatory design is an inclusive and collaborative approach that engages end-users, communities, and stakeholders in the design and decision-making processes of spaces. It emphasises active involvement, shared decision-making, and co-creation to ensure that the designed spaces and structures authentically rep-resent the needs, values, and aspirations of the people who will inhabit or use them. This approach can cultivate a sense of own-ership and empowerment among communities and individuals. By involving them in the design process, it recognises their exper-tise and insights regarding their needs and the intricacies of their environment. This, in turn, fosters a stronger commitment, pride, and responsibility toward the resulting spaces. Furthermore, par-ticipatory design contributes to social cohesion and a sense of community by bringing people together, promoting collaboration, and fostering trust among various stakeholders. By incorporating diverse voices and perspectives, it reduces the potential for con-flict, ensures more equitable outcomes, and supports social har-mony.

Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) encompasses various as-pects of the indoor environment that directly impact the health, comfort, and well-being of building occupants. It addresses fac-tors such as indoor air quality, thermal comfort, lighting, acoustics, and overall spatial design within structures. The importance of IEQ lies in its significant influence on the physical and psycholog-ical health of people living or working in those spaces.

IEQ is essential because it directly affects occupants' productivity, concentration, and overall quality of life. Good indoor air quality, for instance, ensures that occupants are not exposed to harmful pollutants or allergens, reducing the risk of respiratory problems. Adequate thermal comfort through effective heating and cooling systems helps create a pleasant and productive environment, while appropriate lighting levels support visual comfort and circa-dian rhythms, positively affecting mental and physical health.

The relationship between light and well-being in architecture encompasses the study and application of how natural and artificial lighting within built environments significantly impacts the physical, emotional, and psychological health of the occupants. It involves optimising the quantity, quality, and distribution of light to craft spaces that foster comfort, productivity, and overall wellness. This interplay between light and well-being directly influences the circadian rhythms of individuals. For instance, exposure to natural light during the day aids in regulating sleep patterns, mood, and alertness, thereby contributing to improved mental health and reduced stress levels. Furthermore, well-illuminated spaces play a pivotal role in enhancing visual comfort, mitigating eye strain, and cultivating an inviting and aesthetically pleasing atmosphere. Ultimately, this synergy between light and architecture transforms structures into environments that prioritise the holistic well-being of their inhabitants.

Imagine a thriving neighbourhood where the design and planning of the built environment are not just about structures, but about the well-being of the people living there. Community health in architecture is all about this vision, emphasising the physical, mental, and social wellness of a community's residents. It means crafting spaces that nurture healthy lifestyles, offer healthcare accessibility, foster social connections, and cater to the specific needs of the people who call the community home. This approach can have a profound impact on both individuals and the community at large. Well-designed neighbourhoods, complete with nearby parks, recreational facilities, and access to nutritious food options, can inspire physical activity and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.

Active architecture within the context of health and wellbeing Prioritises the creation of built environments that actively encourage physical activity and healthier lifestyles among occupants. This approach involves architectural design that incorporates elements promoting movement, exercise, and overall well-being. It directly contributes to physical health by making regular physical activities more accessible. Features like appealing, well-lit staircases, access to recreational facilities, and pedestrian-friendly urban planning encourage walking, cycling, and active commuting, reducing sedentary behaviours linked to chronic health issues. Moreover, active architecture fosters social well-being. Spaces designed to promote physical activity, like community parks, sports facilities, and pedestrian-friendly streets, provide opportunities for people to come together, socialise, and form connections, thereby improving mental and emotional health.

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).

Zero carbon buildings and nZEB (nearly zero energy) buildings are crucial to meet ambitious national, EU and global climate targets that target the reduction of fossil fuel use in society, including in architecture. This is necessary to reduce CO2 emissions associated with the burning of fossil fuels. Every fraction of a degree of CO2 reduction matters.

To ensure a just and fair carbon neutral transition, carbon reduction measures such as nZEB must go hand-in-hand with other sustainability approaches such as inclusive and democratic processes with people and communities (see all other themes). At the heart of creating nZEBs are:

• Fabric and energy efficiency principles first (high insulation, airtightness standards, appropriate solar design etc. – see passive resilience theme).

• Ensure you undertake inclusive and democratic process and make sure no-one is left behind (see people & communities theme).

• Post-competition, return to check if things work as intended (i.e. achieving actual performance – see performance theme)

• After all, carbon emissions are not saved on paper but must be achieved in reality.

You as an architects play a vital role in achieving a carbon neutral society: early inclusion of nZEB strategies helps to integrate passive resilience approaches that reduce the need for energy in the first place. The goal is to make buildings that use less energy, thereby reducing carbon emissions

The essence of a building's success lies in its performance and the building envelope contributes significantly to the overall building’s performance. For the energy performance and occupant satisfaction and wellbeing, particularly crucial are the performance of airtightness, thermal bridging, the design of openings for ventilation and daylight and solar gain while minimising glare and overheating. It is paramount that user experience and human factors are included from the start because it is vital for health and well-being. While regulations exist, enforcing continuous envelope performance remains a challenge. Standards tend to overlook the nuances of real-world application. Feedback from various projects reveals critical issues such as insulation gaps and poor airtightness, calling for improved validation and rigorous construction. In buildings, many stakeholders need to be involved at different stages of the process (i.e., during planning, design, execution and the in-use stage and later feedback from it.

Finding out about users’ needs and expectations and responding to this in your project, means that your project is more likely to meet their expectations and your design intentions in reality. This is why we need to ask people about their needs and expectations and involve them at the beginning of the design process in the first place. So, map who the key users and stakeholders are in your own project. User engagement early on should not be neglected in favour of post-completion feedback or quantitative building monitoring only. Placing user-centric and feedback processes at the heart of design processes will require a culture change in most architectural practices (and in architecture education). During different stages you can include feedback processes, but even where a full integration or post-competition evaluation is not possible, collecting less extensive feedback is still of value. For example, it can be focused on specific issues that you want to understand. Knowledge gained from these processes must be used to respond to in your project, and to fix things if they do not work to ensure design intentions and values are met. Open sharing and publishing of lessons learned is crucial: the urgency of the climate and biodiversity crises require us to not waste time and instead to share and collaborate to ensure we all create truly sustainable buldings that perform in reality

Understanding and evaluating the risks to building performance is essential for designing in the climate emergency. One crucial tool in this process is monitoring the performance of your project combined with the use of benchmarks. This is because collecting feedback (i.e. monitoring) is one of the best ways to reduce risk to performance as it will reveal issues that can then be fixed; it also requires design processes to be altered throughout all stages with attention to performance, which further minimises risks. Benchmarks can be used as part of the design process and are a standard or performance target against which real-world feedback can be measured. It can also be used as a goal for one’s own project’s performance. Benchmarks, are vital tools for all built environment professionals to define scope, compare, collect data, develop and implement strategies, monitor, evaluate, learn and develop. Often they are quantifiable and relate to technical performance, though occupant satisfaction surveys are increasingly valued. When benchmarking energy consumption, it's crucial that you use recent data from similar projects, age and construction standards. Ideally, these benchmarks should rely on measured performance data.

Buildings are not static; they interact with changing environments, users, and evolving climate conditions. However, they often don't perform as expected, leading to higher energy consumption, user dissatisfaction, and increased carbon emissions. These underperformance issues often go unnoticed because we don't actively collect feedback from users and building systems, which can be done through Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) and Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) processes. To ensure that what you design work as intended, you need to work with people at different stages: i.e., you need to gather ’feedback’ from a range of stakeholders before, during and after the design to understand their needs and expectations and refine your project accordingly. This reduces the risk to the project’s performance once finished, which is fundamental to ensure that the climate emergency is tackled in reality and not just on paper. Remember: including a diversity of stakeholders enables us to understand and respond to different needs and expectations in our projects.

Designing for the climate emergency cannot be achieved on paper only. It must work in reality for the users, in terms of energy and other sustainability targets set out. With the growing urgency of the climate emergency, these underperforming buildings need to be rethought. Some solutions that you should consider in your design project to reduce the performance gap and that help you achieve your design goals in reality are:

• Integrated design, where sustainability and performance aspects are not added on, but integrated from the early stages of the design process through to in-use stages

• Use performance aspects to help define your project

• The more contextual information you gather early on, the more likely that you select suitable sustainable approaches and that the project will perform as intended.

• Validation of your design proposal (e.g. daylight studies, energy use studies, solar and wind studies, spatial studies but remember they are still predictions)

• Mapping performance risks; for example create a performance risk plan

• Work with users and key stakeholders, for example create a democratic design plan

• Evaluating if intended performance is met in reality