The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
In this six-episode series, Hattie Hartman and her co-host George Morgan interview changemakers and innovators who are transforming architecture as we know it by designing in ways that respect planetary boundaries. Our six champions will offer inspiration as well as sharing essential knowledge about design in an era of climate emergency.
In episode three, Pelsmakers, author of the Environmental Design Pocketbook, describes sustainable architecture as ‘super architecture on steroids’, an architecture that must ‘perform’. She discusses the critical importance of a holistic approach to sustainable design, and the urgent need for top-down architecture curriculum reform. Also featured in the episode is a short chat with Scott McAulay, architecture graduate and founder of the Anthropocene Architecture School.
You can catch up on the previous episodes of AJ Climate Champions with Maria Smith here and Annalie Riches here.
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About Sofie Pelsmakers
Pelsmakers is assistant professor in sustainable housing design at Tampere University in Finland. She trained as an architect in Belgium before coming to the UK in 1997 where she completed two Masters in sustainable design at the University of East London and a PhD at the Bartlett, alongside stints in practice at ECD Architects and Levitt Bernstein. She was selected as an RIBA Role Model (2015) and was one of two Bartlett PhD Alumni Role Models (2017).
In 2020, Pelsmakers secured a €300,000 grant with five other European universities to develop an online climate emergency curriculum. She is also preparing a climate curriculum handbook with colleagues in the UK and Denmark, and is currently setting up a Nordic chapter of ACAN, the Architects Climate Action Network.
Show notes: resources mentioned in this episode
- AECB The Wood from the Trees
- Accelerating change in architectural education by Sofie Pelsmakers and Fionn Stevenson
- The Environmental Design Pocketbook
- Energy People Buildings by Judit Kimpian, Hattie Hartman and Sofie Pelsmakers
- Design Studio Everything Needs to Change – Architecture and the Climate Emergency (RIBA, 2021) ed. Sofie Pelsmakers and Nick Newman
About Scott McAulay
McAulay is an architecture graduate in Glasgow and founder of the Anthropocene Architecture School – an educational response to the climate emergency.
- Architecture schools need to reform their teaching to combat climate change – AJ opinion piece written by McAulay
- Anthropocene ArchiLibrary
- UK Hempcrete
- TRADA Climate Literacy Workshop
- Scottish Ecological Design Association
- IPCC report
- Architecture Fringe
- Scott at the RIAS National Convention
- No awards on a dead planet
- Collective Architecture
- Bennetts Associates
Missed the first two episodes? Listen here
Credits
Climate Champions is produced in association with ACAN, the Architects Climate Action Network
Podcast edited by Concept Culture
Music: Edmilson do Pífano, Forró de dois Amigos. Interpretation: Felipe Tanaka e banda Balaio de Baião