How can we adapt education programmes to the architecture of the future?

 

Architects and engineers in the building and construction industry are facing great challenges today due to the fact that energy consumption will have to be reduced to a considerable degree within the next few years in order to ensure that no further harm is done to the global environment. The industry is thus facing major changes in terms of public regulation and in the way building and construction is carried out in practice, whereby former habits seen in relation to energy optimisation of the building will have to give way to new and better methods.

It has been a logical challenge to develop teaching methods at the Department of Architecture & Design at Aalborg University that are tailored to dealing with current societal/technological, environmental and sustainability issues. In terms of both research and teaching, Aalborg University utilises an interdisciplinary approach to a considerable extent. At Architecture & Design at Aalborg University, we are working with environmentally sustainable architecture. We use a method called the Integrated Design Process, which is developed for this purpose and which is an interdisciplinary approach to designing environmentally sustainable architecture. Two examples of students' projects in which this method is applied for a low-energy building and for a zero-emission building respectively are included in this article.