Integrating a Climate Change Adaptation Agenda into Architectural Education

This paper explores how architectural educators can integrate climate change adaptation considerations into design studio pedagogy. A case study of a project that asked students to design an environmental education centre for a site that is particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change is presented. This project required the students to make future speculations about the evolution of their design proposal and the associated climatic and environmental context with a high emissions greenhouse gas (GHG) scenario up to the year 2084. This pedagogical approach was reflected upon, by the learning facilitators, throughout its duration. These reflections were triangulated against written and verbal feedback from the architecture students and, also, against peer review of the teaching approach by other architectural educators. Based on these multiple methods of reflection, pedagogical tactics for integrating climate change adaptation into the design studio are presented. These tactics and the lessons learned can be adopted by other architectural educators with similar educational goals.