Responsible Architecture: Relational Approaches to Sustainable Behavior in Design

The project entitled ‘Responsible Architecture: Relational Approaches to Sustainable Behavior in Design’ is a practice-based research project that strives to develop a critical framework for the integration of relational approaches to promote sustainable behavior in architectural practice and learning. It investigates the relationship between sustain­able practices in architecture and the prevailing architectural perspectives (its world­views, values, and practices), and it evaluates the necessary transformation these need to undergo in response to our time’s increasing environmental and social challenges.

Drawing from a multidisciplinary approach supplied by environmental psychology, environmental education, critical environmental studies, and participatory design, the project delineates responsibility as a critical framework and a relational tool. This framework and tools aim to facilitate the development of strategies for architects to in­corporate sustainable behavior in design projects. A distinct attribute of Responsible Architecture (RA) is its acknowledgment of the root of sustainable behavior being inter­twined with an architect’s emotional ability to handle the numerous psychological and social challenges in the pursuit to practice sustainability. This ability can be enriched by working on and achieving emotional attunement in our practice, such as aligning our worldviews and values with our professional practices. Thus, building on a critical framework, the project also proposes relational tools designed to assist architects in cul­tivating this emotional capacity.

The perspective proposed here is elaborated and cultivated through diverse experimen­tal engagements, such as interviews with professionals in the field of architectural sus­tainability, participatory design workshops within the architectural studio, and research within post-graduate architectural education settings. These experimental engagements yielded insights into the construction of the RA critical framework and strategies that might challenge and modify current architectural practice and education.

By broadening the dimensions of responsibility within architecture to include a criti­cal and relational practice, this study doesn’t provide a final answer to RA. Instead, it prompts all current and future architects to become active and conscious of their indi­vidual and collective responsibilities in practicing architecture that is more responsive to the environmental and social challenges of our time.

Participatory Design:

In this PhD, RA is explored in a case study in a participatory self-build community project, between local communities from Institut for (X) and architectural students. In a series of value-led participatory design workshops, students and stakeholders are encouraged to reflect on their core values related to the project’s ecological and social issues. The aim is to bring awareness of values and behaviours and promote more sustainable behaviour that can address local environmental and social issues through architectural practices.

Besides workshops, this PhD collects a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews with architects, anthropologists, psychologists and more. This can be accessed in the Engaging Through Architecture Podcast.

More information on the community page.

Supervisors

• Associate Professor, Thomas Hilberth
• Assistant Professor, Urszula Kozminska
• Assistant Professor, Elizabeth Donovan