Beyond Appearances: Integrating environmental performance in architectural design education

Abstract

In response to concerns of climate change, the growing emphasis on sustainable architecture is matched by a plethora of regulatory codes and rating schemes that mandate or benchmark building environmental performance in many parts of the globe. In Australia, the Education and Sustaiuability Policies of the Australian Institute of Architects and accreditation processes of the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia (A..ACA) commit to implementing sustainable design practices across all its endeavours and reinforce the importance of this discipline area. Consequently, the inclusion of environmental studies and architectural science in some form or other within any architectural course has remained largely uncontested despite the pressure to curriculum content from an ever widening scope of professional architectural requirements. Nevertheless, a review of several papers on the pedagogical approaches and outcomes for environmental studies reveal consistent themes surrounding the compartmentalised approach to teaching these subjects in architectural courses, the desire to integrate environmental studies into studio teaching, and the need to make the discipline area more appealing to students (see AlA 2006, Rutherford 2006 and Loftness 2005).