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What is the role of architecture – and the architect – in the Anthropocene?

It’s an immutable fact: human activity is driving the climate and biodiversity crises that now threaten all life. The damage we inflict on the planet undermines basic human rights, displaces millions, and intensifies structural racism, sexism and segregation, with the greatest burden falling on the most vulnerable people and ecosystems.

Architects must act.

The design and construction of most buildings and urban environments today are rooted in an economic model that pursues infinite growth. Our profession is embedded in a paradigm that favours individual gain over collective benefit. We are rewarded for overlooking the interdependence between people and the natural world. Architecture contributes directly to environmental degradation and social injustice.

Architects agree that the profession must change. But we lack the tools and knowledge to undertake the transformations that are urgently needed. This book aims to address that need through 15 chapters illustrating how we can act collectively to make a difference.

Architectural Thinking in a Climate Emergency brings together writers, researchers, educators, students and practitioners working at the forefront of this transformation. Contributors come from fourteen countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America and Oceania. Many are leading voices in their fields; others are emerging thinkers introducing fresh perspectives from both academia and practice.

Above all, they each affirm the architect’s responsibility to help transition toward carbon-neutral, sustainable practices that advance social and environmental justice.

In the stark light of the climate emergency, using wood instead of concrete, steel, or masonry is increasingly seen as a way of reducing the environmental impact of architecture and construction. More and more new buildings are showcasing innovative ways to work with wood. Wood can help architects achieve ambitious sustainability targets, including the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

How can architects, student architects, and those in the construction industry better understand the qualities, characteristics, and possibilities of building with wood? Practising Wood in Architecture explores the methods, philosophies, and possibilities of contemporary teaching practices in architecture. This book explores how architecture students are learning to build with wood and interrogates the consequences for architectural practice.

Based on original research conducted over two years, the book explores innovative projects that use wood in China, England, Finland, Germany, Mongolia, South Africa, and Switzerland. These case studies demonstrate the many advantages of wood, including its simplicity of use, its affordability, and its sustainability. The book focuses on ongoing initiatives that show the educational and professional impact of the use of wood in architecture and construction by students and professionals alike.

In this opening chapter, the editors of Architectural Thinking in a Time of Climate Emergency critically examine the role of architects and architecture in the era of the climate emergency, underlining how the built environment significantly contributes to environmental degradation through high carbon emissions, resource extraction, and unsustainable practices. The editors contend that traditional architectural thinking – rooted in competitive, market-driven models and narrow design paradigms – is insufficient to address the intertwined crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and social injustice. The conventional focus of architectural practice on quantifiable metrics of environmental performance, such as carbon emissions, often neglects qualitative aspects like user well-being, ecological balance, and social equity. In light of this, an optimistic definition of architectural thinking is offered: an embodied, multi-modal process that involves both divergent and convergent modes of thought, merging creative, hands-on making with critical reflection. This vision of architectural thinking as a necessary response to the climate emergency contrasts with the normative design thinking that got us into this situation, emphasising our connectivity to historical, cultural, and professional contexts. Looking ahead to the chapters in the book, this chapter advocates for a radical transformation in both architectural practice and education, calling for a more holistic, collaborative, and inclusive approach. By learning from innovative case studies and global precedents, the editors suggest that architects must reframe their role to become proactive change-makers who can embrace a renewed, socially and environmentally responsible mode of thinking that prioritises global citizenship, ecological justice, and transformative practices. 

There is something special about a studio as a place of practice and learning.

Studio is a complex form of teaching and learning. If you have not experienced studio, it may seem mysterious, even chaotic. If you have experienced studio, you may want to know more about how and why it works. Either way, Studio Properties will deepen your understanding of studio to help you teach, research, or administer design education more effectively and with greater confidence and creativity.

Use Studio Properties like a field guide. You will discover the components of studio broken down into individual properties. You will find clear descriptions and a wealth of research references that illuminate studio. You will be guided in understanding the relationships between properties without being limited to one model or approach.

In this innovative and non-linear book, available in print, ebook and open access, six internationally renowned and award-winning educators and researchers from various studio disciplines invite you to explore familiar and less-familiar aspects of studio.

The potential of timber to be a strategic material in the pursuit of sustainability in architecture has been demonstrated in recent times by academic research (Ibañez, 2019) and practical experimentation. (Menges et al., 2016) These projects show how an effective use of timber in architecture should be linked to a change of approach towards this material: timber should not be seen as passive and exploitable but rather as a living entity whose complex ecology must be integrated with the design of buildings. Establishing a use of wood that builds on its ecology, rather than opposing and weakening it, can contribute to repairing the relation between mankind and environment. Architectural teaching can be crucial for this goal: design-build and live project initiatives, in which students can confront timber in different stages of design, can give future architects an idea of the extension of the ecology of this material and the environmental implications of its use in the built environment. This paper provides an intellectual framework for a renewed approach to working with timber in architectural education as an effective way of developing a better environmental and ecological conscience in future practitioners. Through a qualitative research approach, this work tries to understand the inspirations, reasons, goals, and commitments of educators choosing to work hands-on with timber with architecture students. 

This article examines three catastrophic fires in Modernist buildings – the World Trade Center in New York City (2001), Grenfell Tower in London (2017), and 80 Albert Street in Johannesburg (2023) – to explore the evolving responsibilities of architects within the Metamodern episteme. It highlights how these events underscore architecture’s dual roles: ensuring human safety and navigating buildings’ contingent, dynamic lives in a crisis-ridden era. By situating these tragedies within a theoretical framework of Metamodernism, characterised by oscillation between modernist ideals and postmodern scepticism, the paper advocates for a realignment of architectural theory with the practical and ethical demands of contemporary global challenges. In doing so, it argues for a departure from aesthetic paradigms. It calls for developing resilient, humane, and contextually responsive design practices to address crises such as climate change, housing insecurity, and social inequality. 

This chapter is a critical exploration of the mediated image of the nineteenth century Palace of Westminster, the seat of the United Kingdom’s (lower) House of Commons and (upper) House of Lords. It is particularly concerned with the reproduction of that image from the point of a view of a small public park, the importance of which became internationally apparent in the months leading up to and following the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum of 23 June 2016.

Although absurd to outsiders, the process of moving houses (husflyttningar) in northern Sweden is quite common. A husflyttning will always draw a crowd of spectators and perhaps get a photograph in the local newspaper, but what is most remarkable about the act of moving a house is how unremarkable it is. Understanding house movements, whether for economic or cultural purposes, and whether piecemeal or wholesale, gives us an opportunity to understand some of the fundamental intellectual questions about our built environment.

Architecture is the practice of designing buildings, and the mastery of the knowledge and skills to do so. Architectural authorship is often ascribed to individual architects. However, since the adoption of technologies such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Building Information Management (BIM), the design of buildings has become more dynamic and collaborative. Postdigital architecture is characterised, therefore, by the ways in which the skills and knowledge employed in the design and construction of buildings are no longer the exclusive preserve of the architect.

Based in Umeå, Northern Sweden, this project looks at the phenomena of moving whole houses and other buildings. This practice occurs through- out Sweden, in the USA, New Zealand and other territories. Moving structures this way has occurred for over a hundred years. This research picks up the practice, initially through the potential spectacle of the event 

of moving structures, and then focuses on a more material and poetic aspect of the practice. It has not been researched in depth and much of what seems to be understood as a normal, if infrequent phenomena, raises questions about the use of resources, spatial planning and conceptions and representations of space and artifacts. There is also an appreciation of the substantial immediacy of process of moving a particular house, the aquired skills and knowledge of the mover, of materials and substances in the process and also how it stands in contrast to the production and representation of architecture and spatial plans framed through the conceptual and actual lens of digital screens. 

The process of moving a particular house became the subject of documentation, from stages of preparation to the uplift, the unsettling, moving and settling. Through re- peated visits to the sites of the house moves, it became possible to develop awareness of the history and extent of this practice. The house mover Magnus Mårtensson has more than forty years of experience of the history of house and building moving. 

Part of the research was to re-visit original sites and the new location of the house after several months. This was a photographic and video documentation and material for re-thinking the process. The form of this was further photographic and video work, to record and project the mid-summer move, along with historic materials from the public library history collection and regional museums onto and into sites, buildings and surfaces. 

This chapter has four parts. There are inserted transcripts of comments from a video interview with Magnus Mårtensson and his son Andreas Mårtensson (who had worked with Magnus on house moving). There is an historic overview of the practices of moving houses by James Benedict Brown. There is also a theoretical frame to the process of mov- ing houses and the fourth section is a description of some of the creative and potentially 

speculative re-presentation of the process and practice of moving buildings, which has been developed collaboratively with Robin Serjeant, through the Relate North Symposium at Yukon University in January 2023 

The inserted transcripts develop the spatial significance of this particular form of building moving. It allows for close reading of the economy of the production of space, through this traditional process, which is associated with restrictions on the dimensions of the space. It occurs without the use of specialist cranes and cages.