Teaching architecture through an energy and climate lens

Abstract

Despite the increasing societal awareness of the climate crisis, considerations of outdoor and indoor climate, energy consumption and generation, and the environmental impact of material choices still represent a niche in architectural practice. Given the urgency of the issue, addressing these topics needs to be integrated in architectural design. In this work, we first describe a build-up of teaching formats and position them in view of learners’ competence development in architectural design through an energy and climate lens. We identify opportunities to refine our teaching instruments further and improve the learners' ability to independently integrate topics related to energy, emissions, climate, and comfort in the practice of design projects. We end with an outlook of an idealized build-up of these competencies across an architecture curriculum.