The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
The survey of more than 400 UK-based students revealed significant gaps in teaching about the circular economy and how to reuse existing buildings, with a further 26 per cent claiming there needed to be extra focus on the topic.
Worryingly, just a sixth of those polled (17 per cent) said retrofit was a priority at their school, with one survey respondent saying: ‘Many units told [their] students to “ignore” the building on site currently.’
‘I've never had experience with a retrofit project,’ said another.
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Other anonymous comments from the survey included: ‘Certain tutors are still happy for people to construct new buildings utilising virgin materials. There’s no teaching around reuse, retrofit or the circular economy during teaching hours.’
Another student added: ‘There are adaptive reuse projects in studio, but the technicalities and details are not covered in the same extent as new-build.’
One student based at a top-ranked London school said ‘most units do not have reuse and retrofit at the core of their agenda.’
However, the survey shows that students are more likely to be taught about the wider subjects concerning the climate emergency, sustainable design and whole-life carbon.
According to 27 per cent of those polled, sustainability underpins every aspect of their university courses.
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Tutors have explicitly said “sustainable architecture is ugly”
One respondent said: ‘Almost an entire module focused on reading around the climate emergency in the first year. [It was] fantastic and stimulating to be a part of.’
Another added: ‘[These topics are] basically talked about non-stop, which is good. However, it is often spoken about at the expense of other important considerations. For example, students keep putting hydroponic farms and the like in places where it would make next to no economic sense.’
The figures show that four per cent of students are still not getting any tuition in sustainability and that more than two-thirds believe teaching in this area could be improved.
Among the respondents unhappy with their schools, one said: ‘[These topics] are discussed in some capacity in our environmental technology module, but there is no mention in tutorials or crits. These issues should lead design but we are rarely taught the basics and it is incredibly difficult to drive sustainable design with knowledge we don’t have!
‘I'm not sure it is even on the radars of many tutors to be honest.’
Another added: ‘Tutors have explicitly said to stop [focusing on this area] as “sustainable architecture is ugly”.’
Comments
Carl Meddings, programme leader for MArch Sustainable Architecture at the Centre for Alternative Technology
These survey results are really interesting and quite worrying.
It’s good to see that some responses say that this ‘underpins everything we do’, but rather disappointing that 73 per cent of responses acknowledge that there is more to do. Much more in some cases.
Changes to courses and curricula within universities can be a very slow process. The climate and biodiversity emergency is now a mainstream topic and schools of architecture are paying more attention to these issues, but clearly not with the sense of urgency that is required.
Sustainability is not a bolt-on extra
Sustainability and all its associated thinking is not a bolt-on extra. It needs to be at the heart of architectural education if we are to equip future practitioners to be the change-makers that they will need to be. We need to do architecture differently and explore issues much more deeply. It’s a question of values really. If architecture is anything, it is the manifestation of our species’ relationship with our planet. Environmental concerns are part of architectural humanities, architectural design and architectural technology. It is a big-picture issue, a societal issue, it is about resilience, equality, fairness.
We should also be cautious of how current architectural practice (operating as it does within the prevailing neoliberal political system) influences architectural education. This, along with widespread ‘greenwash’, can obscure the values we might aspire to. Groups like Students Climate Action Network (Stucan) and Decolonise Architecture are doing a great job in this regard, holding a mirror up to the profession.
Much of the work of future architects will be with existing buildings
The question about retrofit is even more concerning. Schools often shy away from design exercises where refurbishment and reuse are explored. There’s no escaping the fact that our building stock needs to be upgraded to meet our commitment to zero carbon targets. Much of the work of our future architects will be working with existing buildings. The current education of architects in this area happens mainly in practice. There is certainly room for innovation in architectural education around retrofit, reuse, repurposing, and circular economy. Just as important as working with what we have, we also must acknowledge that we should be working much more closely with ‘who’ we have. The occupants and inhabitants of our buildings, our communities, are key to achieving truly transformational adaptation.
Many of these issues are areas of exploration (student-led, typically) at Part 2 level, but the grounding surely has to be at Part 1. Undergraduate courses are fertile ground for exploring alternative ways of thinking and should provide students with the basic tools for building and design analysis. Currently, ARB are considering focussing their attention on Part 2 courses in the process of changing their procedures for prescription. This is being couched in terms of creating different routes into the profession and widening access to otherwise unrepresented groups – which is no bad thing and something the whole profession should be working and campaigning for – but at what cost? It is a cause for concern, given the results of this survey, that it is looking like ARB prescription at Part 1 will disappear.
Piers Taylor, Invisible Studio
In terms of buildings themselves, environmental thinking is a very hard thing to teach in the context of many courses, requiring much more specific rather than generalised projects. With our students, we always try and work on real sites with real buildings and real materials, which means it is much easier to deal with the specific and understand that materials are finite and real and can drive design decisions all the way through a project.
When materials and projects are abstract, it can be difficult to develop really integrated proposals that look carefully at resources. Slightly wider, it is dangerous to talk of building design as ‘solving’ the environmental crisis as it appeals to the self-aggrandising nature of architecture and architects‘ desire to be the hero. Integrated approaches where architecture engages with the world have never been more important, hence my nervousness with paper projects which don’t have the tussle of the decisions that are based in, and challenged, by the contingencies of the world in terms of clients, cost and resources.
Perhaps the alarming aspect of the survey is that it suggests that, in many schools, environmental thinking is ‘separate’ from design – or even an ‘exclusive’ consideration that can drive everything in abstract rather than being a fundamental part of every decision.
The Bartlett’s MA Architecture and Historic Urban Environments (MAHUE) – ‘does what it says on the tin’!
The vast majority of human-made places we will inhabit in the future have already been created. Making existing places better – more efficient, fairer, cleaner, sustainable, inclusive, and more equitable – is the real challenge. The sooner built environment professions comprehend this reality and the existential threat posed by any alternative (within the limits of current known technologies) the better. Working with what we have within our planetary limits is far more complex, challenging and urgent. Long gone are the days of the hero architect imposing their will on a world devoid of context. The world has moved on – architectural education needs to too.