VIRTUAL: Applying Education
Abstract
The simultaneous realisation of the radical impact of the climate emergency on the built environment and the introduction of powerful digital tools represent the most important factors shaping the future design and social agendas for architects. The Bachelor of Science on Architecture and Environmental Design at the University of Westminster (the first of its kind in the UK) confronts this new landscape with the aim of forming the ‘climate change architect’, a figure able to navigate the social, scientific, and technological complexities of the climate emergency to rethink what architects will build, what knowledge and tools they will make use of, and how they will work. The conceptual and practical tools of complexity – which focus on relational thinking, emergence, collective behaviour, and avoidance of reductionist thinking – provide a useful framework to systematize this novel and intricate landscape in which scientific, aesthetic, social, and material aspects of design need to be studied anew and synthesised in a new approach to architecture. The paper discusses the ongoing research developed within the Programme by presenting paradigmatic projects that demonstrate how complexity thinking shapes both the curricula and the students’ output. The discussion will foreground the innovative aspects of the research such as: how evidence-based approach to design supports challenges how existing conditions are analysed and communicated; the interaction with other expertise (such as medicine and environmental consultants, and theoreticians), and the need to bridge between scientific and humanistic disciplines by combining digital simulations and anthropological analysis of specific spatial conditions.
Stefania Boccaletti has studied, practiced and taught architecture in Italy, Canada and the UK, gaining international experience in the restoration of heritage buildings and design of educational institutions. Throughout her carrier as a practitioner and academic, she has been studying the impact of digital tools on the design and fabrication process in architecture and environmental design, including how they affect the pedagogy of the design studio. Her current research focuses on the role that data and sensing technologies have in integrating wider issues related to climate change.
Roberto Bottazzi is an architect, researcher, and Senior Tutor at the University of Westminster, London and The Bartlett, UCL. He has been visiting Professor at the Politecnico of Milan and visiting tutor at the Innovation Design Engineering [IDE] at the Royal College of Art, and he lectures and exhibits internationally. His research analyses the impact of digital technologies on architecture and urbanism. He is the author of Digital Architecture beyond Computers: Fragments of a Cultural History of Computational Design and editor of Walking Cities: London.
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Friday 28th April, 2023