ARCH4CHANGE

Climate change affects us more every day and demands more of us. In light of this naked fact, five universities have joined forces to help develop a new education platform for sustainable architecture everywhere.

The ARCH4CHANGE project aims at providing an open-source platform where teachers and students of architecture can go to find inspiration and knowledge about sustainable architecture.

The project researchers have trawled through 120 curriculums to identify strengths and weaknesses, and they have conducted surveys with more than 500 students providing answers about how and what they are currently taught about sustainable architecture.

In the next phase, the project partners will begin work on the content of the digital platform, including video lectures and resources.

And in more than one sense, ARCH4CHANGE draws on collaboration as a means to achieve more than would otherwise be possible: For one thing, the universities together can provide much more detailed knowledge, and for another, the choice of an open platform means that everyone will be able to update and develop it once it is launched.

The five partners meet every six months to coordinate the work. They are:

• Tampere University
• University of Bologna
• Technological University Dublin
• Tallinn University of Technology
• Aarhus School of Architecture

Two sister projects led by Tampere University are in the works involving Chinese, Ghanaian and American universities, which will further diversify the resource geographically.

The third phase of ARCH4CHANGE is the testing, implementation and launch of the platform. It is meant to go live in 2023.

Hopefully, it will inspire and inform the practice of teaching sustainable architecture, so that the architects tomorrow will be better equipped to challenge the current practice and provide better solutions.

Read more at ARCH4CHANGE

The research project is connected to Research Lab 3.