Students "let down by their architectural education" says climate action group

Climate activist group Architects Climate Action Network has launched a student-focused arm in response to its recent survey, which revealed that UK architecture students feel unprepared to tackle the climate crisis.

The new branch, named Students Climate Action Network (StuCAN), calls on architecture schools to place sustainability at the forefront of their curriculums to reflect the urgency of the climate crisis.

Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) argues that students will be less able to tackle climate change in future work if carbon literacy continues to be seen as a specialist subject.

"Architects are implicit in the climate emergency"

"Fundamentally, students feel they are currently being let down by their architectural education," explained Megan Coe, education coordinator at ACAN.

"We require a change in the curriculum which embraces climate literacy teaching and assessment," she told Dezeen.

"Nearly 40 per cent of the UK's carbon emissions are attributed to the built environment and construction industries. As such, architects are implicit in the climate emergency."

Above: a snapshot of ACAN's survey results. Top: an activist at a climate change protest

"StuCAN seeks to increase student agency, unite student voices and lead a cultural transformation whereby ACAN's core aims are embedded into the curriculum," added Coe.

"We have a responsibility to understand our changing climate and its related injustices to be able to address it in future work."

"Aesthetics are valued more than sustainable design"

StuCAN is a continuation of ACAN's Climate Curriculum campaign, which launched in 2020 to advocate for increased climate literacy in all architecture courses.

As part of the campaign, the group conducted a survey to find out more about current school curriculums. Coe said that this exposed that architecture students feel "ill-equipped to mitigate the effects of the climate and ecological emergency".

According to the survey, 76.9 per cent of students who participated do not feel their course is properly preparing them for future work, while 69.2 per cent believe their tutors are not responding appropriately to the scale of the climate emergency.

ACAN also recorded that 88.5 per cent of participants wanted to be tested on their ability to design carbon-zero buildings, but many reported that "aesthetics are valued more than sustainable design" at their institution.

Quotes from students and tutors shared through the survey

"Currently, different kinds of skills are weighted differently on all accredited courses," Coe reflected.

"Some modules, for example, technical studies, are often assigned far fewer credits. As a result, the knowledge gained from that module is worth less, which is why certain skills including those related to the climate are neglected."

Students encouraged to start climate action groups

According to Coe, another significant result was that 70 per cent of participants were not aware of any student or tutor-led climate action group within their school, meaning they had nowhere to voice their concerns.

For this reason, one of StuCAN's main goals is to galvanise student action and encourage young architects to establish their own action groups at their institutions.

The network champions these groups not only as a way to share knowledge and learn how to design sustainably, but also to gain the confidence to lobby for change and oppose climate-negligent teaching.

"Student-led climate action groups provide a safe space to discuss the climate emergency and ultimately learn how to design sustainably," Coe stated.

Students "have more agency than they are told" 

"The groups allow students to discover they have more agency than they are told, help them to gain confidence in addressing the inadequacies of their education, and through collective action, the groups are providing a multitude of mental health benefits, particularly in a time of uncertainty and isolation," she continued.

"We are encouraging and supporting the formation of these student action groups at universities across the country and promoting interdisciplinary and inter-faculty events and conversation."

ACAN is a network of individuals within the built environment professions, which was established to help alleviate the climate and ecological breakdown.

Its launch of StuCAN follows another recent initiative for which it is campaigning for embodied carbon regulation in the UK.

Embodied carbon regulation is the concept of limiting the emissions that result from the manufacturing, construction, maintenance and demolition of buildings. This is currently unregulated in the UK, which is described by the climate change group as a "huge blind spot" within current building standards.

Main image is by Markus Spiske via Unsplash.

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Public School creates "backyard compostable" sneaker from kombucha waste

New York streetwear label Public School has collaborated with material scientist Theanne Schiros to create a pair of biofabricated trainers using a leather alternative grown by microbes.

Almost the entire trainer, including the upper, midsole and laces, was produced from a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY), which is a key ingredient in making kombucha tea.

Through fermentation, the SCOBY creates a leather substitute that has up to a 97 per cent lower carbon footprint than synthetic polyurethane (PU) leather, according to Schiros.

The trainers are made from a microbial bio-leather

The material scientist also found that while the bio-leather has a lifespan of several years, it remains "backyard compostable" and will break down over a couple of months in a domestic compost heap.

"After 60 days outdoors in soil, the bio-leather samples lost over 70 per cent of their mass, broken down by naturally occurring microorganisms to return as nutrients for a healthy ecosystem," Schiros told Dezeen.

"Enzymes produced by soil microbes break down the nanocellulose. Unless buried in a microbe-rich environment, the bio-leather maintains its durability and performance aside from normal wear and tear, comparable to canvas and leather."

This includes everything from the laces down to the midsoles

Schiros originally created the leather substitute in scientific partnership with researchers from Columbia University's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center.

As part of the Slow Factory Foundation's One X One incubator, she was paired with Public School founders Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne to turn the experimental material into a real, desirable product.

"The aim was to create something that looked great and could communicate that through collaboration – with nature and each other – we can create high performance, degradable products with a circular lifecycle," Schiros explained.

"We chose sneakers because they are so universal and really challenging to make biodegradable because of the durability required and the number of different components."

The trainer's leather was biofabricated, meaning it was grown through natural processes. In this case, Schiros made use of waste SCOBY from local kombucha brewery Om Champagne Tea in Westchester County, New York.

The SCOBY is placed into a base of sweetened tea, where it turns the sugar into bacterial nanocellulose (BNC) as part of the fermentation process.

BNC has higher elasticity and strength than the cellulose that is commonly derived from wood pulp or cotton and is further processed using a plant-based tanning and dyeing process to create the desired leather-like aesthetic and mechanical properties.

Each element that makes up the trainer is individually cast in a mould

Public School wanted part of the shoe to be a deep, opaque black, which is achieved by combining indigo pigment, derived from the leaves of the titular shrub, with a binder of fresh soy milk.

Alternatively, it can also be over-dyed with myrobalan – an ancient dye from the seeds of the myrobalan tree – in a logwood dye bath created from the bark of the acacia tree.

The material is dried in a mould, removing the textile waste associated with traditional pattern cutting. From here, Brooklyn-based shoemaker Anne Marika Verploegh Chassé assembles the trainer using traditional leather moulding techniques.

A cork sheet was used for the sole.

The outsole is made from a sheet of cork

"Microbes spun the material, plants and minerals coloured and tanned it, and humans designed and constructed sneakers from it," Schiros said.

"By harnessing nature's strategy of using microbes to build up and break down rapidly renewable performance materials and incorporating waste-to-resource strategies, we can engineer bio-textiles that can displace extractive, petroleum-based textiles and toxic dyeing and processing."

According to the material scientist, this same process could be scaled up for commercial production.

"Industrial fermentation is already the basis of many of our high-value products, from pharmaceuticals to beer, wine, sourdough and kombucha," she explained.

The One X One incubator is a cross-disciplinary programme that pairs high-profile designers with sustainability innovators, to find ways of mitigating the environmental impact of the fashion industry.

So far, the project has also seen Phillip Lim work with industrial designer Charlotte McCurdy to create a petroleum-free dress covered in algae bioplastic sequins.

Photography is courtesy of Jon Brown.

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Maccreanor Lavington adds timber dining hall with "sense of grandeur" to west London school

UK architecture studio Maccreanor Lavington has added a dining hall with a diamond-shaped glued laminated timber structure to the Ibstock Place School in Roehampton, west London.

Set along the eastern boundary of the independent school's site, the refectory block is formed of a trio of pitched-roof volumes each topped with a glazed lantern.

The timber building was clad in soft stock brick and plain clay tiles to compliment the school's original early 20th-century main schoolhouse, which it stands alongside.

Above: Maccreanor Lavington has added a dining hall to Ibstock Place School in Roehampton. Top: the building's main hall

"Our aim was to create a building with a timeless quality," said project architect at Maccreanor Lavington Thomas Ormerod.

"The refectory is the heart of communal life at the school and we wanted to reflect the school's strong family ethos in the building," he told Dezeen.

The building has a diamond-shaped glued laminated timber roof

While the building's exterior is in keeping with the surrounding buildings and also functions as a calm backdrop for the orchard, inside the refectory has a series of grand spaces topped with a timber roof.

"One could say the building has a sense of grandeur internally – we wanted it to be a celebratory space and this informed the lofty volume of the halls," explained Ormerod.

"In contrast, externally the building is deliberately quieter and low. It sympathetically draws upon its context of the adjoining Edwardian Main House, which it has a subservient relationship with and by sinking the building into the sloping landscape, it provides a formal edge to the historic orchard."

The central block contains the servery

The building's central volume contains the refectory's serving area topped with a dining area for the sixth form pupils.

On either side of this are the block's kitchen, topped with a sixth form study area, and the refectory's main dining area.

The severy is topped with a dining area for sixth form pupils

Each of the block's roofs was constructed from glued laminated timber (glulam) that is visible internally and arranged in a diamond pattern. Oak panelling was set between the glulam and used on the walls to help absorb sound in the dining areas.

"The glulam roof timbers are working in a similar manner to a traditional timber roof, however, we have set the structure out in a diamond pattern," said Ormerod.

"The benefits of using glulam, apart from its beauty, was the structure could be prefabricated and finished off-site."

Glulam structure in the main hall

Overall Ormerod hopes that the studio has created an uplifting environment for the students to eat in.

"As architects, it is important for us to create an environment that is comfortable and enjoyable to be in – this brief felt like a real opportunity to do something uplifting," he said.

Each block is topped with a glass lantern

"This can be a challenge in a building that serves 1,200 meals at lunchtime to pupils aged four to 18 and to school staff," he continued.

"There is potential to create an awful lot of noise, despite this, we hope staff and pupils will notice the calm atmosphere achieved through the pared-back material pallet and extensive acoustic treatment concealed in the roof and wall linings."

Maccreanor Lavington was founded by Gerard Maccreanor and Richard Lavington in 1992 and has offices in London and Rotterdam. The studio previously added a timber-framed house to a 1960s London housing estate and co-designed the Accordia housing development, which won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2008,

Photography is by Jack Hobhouse.

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Scope Promsri residences in Bangkok to be furnished by Ligne Roset

Dezeen promotion: the tropical gardens and luxury residences of this condominium building in Bangkok are set to be furnished with classic and bespoke pieces from French company Ligne Roset.

The eight-storey Scope Promsri is currently under construction in the Thai capital's lush and vibrant Sukhumvit neighbourhood, slated for completion in November 2022.

The eight-storey Scope Promsri is under construction in Sukhumvit, Bangkok

Developed by local real-estate Scope, the low-rise building will include 150 units that range from 28 to 34.99 square metres.

A collaboration with Ligne Roset through Ligne Roset Contract – the brand's first residential project in Southeast Asia – will see the brand furnish common areas and residences with existing and custom designs.

The building is centred around a pool and gardens reminiscent of a Mexican cenote

All Prado settees in the project will be designed to perfectly fit Scope Promsri's layouts, with the owners of the residences able to choose the fabric colours for their unit's Prado settee.

"We worked together with Ligne Roset extensively to refine the size, materials, and special colours and fabrics that can truly achieve what the design is meant to do," said Scope CEO, Yongyutt Chaipromprasith.

The building is organised around a central pool and tropical garden, influenced by the cenotes of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, and offers residents the use of several communal outdoor, semi-outdoor and indoor spaces.

Ligne Roset will furnish the communal outdoor, semi-outdoor and indoor spaces

These lounge and relaxation areas will be furnished with Ligne Roset's Taru, Valmy and Saparella collections, amongst a curated selection of others.

Promsri Edition residences will include the Promsri Table designed specifically for this project, along with the Prado sofa by Christian Werner, which can be customised with the owners' choice of colour and fabric – only possible due to the bespoke manufacturing capabilities of Ligne Roset Contract.

Lounge areas will include Ligne Roset's Taru, Valmy and Saparella collections

Larger units also come with a pair of Ettoriano chairs by Claudio Dondoli and Marco Pocci.

Architectural features include full-sized windows with reflective glass and motorised blackout blinds for privacy, plus acoustic window film to reduce external noise transfer by 30 per cent.

Residences will also feature Ligne Roset furniture

Miele kitchen appliances, Liebherr fridges and Kohler bathroom fixtures all come as standard in every unit.

For more information about Scope Promsri and the Ligne Roset collaboration, visit the website.

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Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen for Scope Collection as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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"How is placing bricks in the street terrorism?" asks commenter

In this week's comments update, readers are debating the winner of the People's Choice category at the Designs of the Year awards and sharing their views on other top stories.

This year's winner of the People's Choice category at the Designs of the Year awards is Brick Arches – makeshift roadblocks from Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests.

The roadblocks are ordinary bricks stacked ankle-high in clusters of three, set up on roads to stop vehicles moving forward.

When struck by a wheel, the top brick falls away and the remaining two bricks form a buttress that prevents the wheel from moving.

According to Design Museum curator Maria McLintock, the design won because the roadblocks could be made by anyone anywhere.

"It is one thing peacefully protesting, but another actively destroying the city"

Readers are divided. "This is horrible," said Sam Jian. "The bricks are from the public roadway, public property used by everyone. These rioters are destroying public property. It is one thing peacefully protesting, but another actively destroying the city."

Heywood Floyd continued: "The ability for protestors to build their own roadblocks can only be praised when the protestors' political ideologies are in alignment with those of the people issuing the praise. Once the common interests diverge, all you are left with is domestic terrorism. Imagine the insurrectionists at the US Capitol using this concept. Slippery slope..."

"How is placing bricks in the street terrorism?" replied Steve. "An armed, violent unreasoning mob breaking into your workplace is domestic terrorism. If the insurrectionists had just placed bricks in the street, it would have been an inconvenience for some, but I don't think anyone would have been too terrorised."

Hello Peril agreed: "Losing the right to vote, violations of the integrity of the legal system and Supreme Court, violations of human rights and living under a suppressive dictatorship is why the brave people of Hong Kong are rebelling against the system. But don't worry about all that, you worry about those poor little old bricks on the road."

What do you think of the project? Join the discussion ›

Studio Roosegaarde's ultraviolet Urban Sun light "cleans public spaces of coronavirus"

"I pray it works" says reader

Commenters are debating Studio Roosegaarde's proposal for a light that uses ultraviolet radiation to sanitise outdoor spaces. The project aims to reduce the risk of people contracting Covid-19.

"Extraordinary," said Toni Callas. "I pray it works."

Olivier Van Den Hoven was less sure: "Perhaps I'm not smart enough, but the way I see it a contagious person can still easily contaminate his or her neighbour when he or she steps into the sanitised cone and utters a loud 'hello'. What am I missing here?"

Cassandra Many from Studio Roosegaarde responded in the comments section: "Urban Sun is not a cure for the virus, nor should it be considered a replacement for safety precautions in place as established by local governments. It is meant to be an additional layer of safety, and an exploration of what is possible if we look for solutions within both science and design."

Are you impressed by Urban Sun? Join the discussion ›

Es Devlin to fill Somerset House courtyard with 400 trees for London Design Biennale

"The concept is admirable, but why call it a forest?" asks commenter

Readers are discussing Es Devlin's plans to fill the entire courtyard of Somerset House in London with 400 trees this summer. The installation is part of the city's Design Biennale.

"The concept is admirable, but why call it a forest?" asked Jeff Harpell. "In nature that's plants, animals, microbes and interrelated processes – a marvellous ecosystem. A bunch of potted trees does not a forest make."

Alfred Hitchcock agreed: "These trees certainly won't be 'planted' in this grade I listed paved courtyard. They will be in pots. Do 400 trees really constitute a "forest"? There's more trees than that in the adjacent Victoria Embankment Gardens."

"'The Forest for Change' sounds a bit better than 'Trees in Pots for Change'", replied Chris Becket. "For all of you who are so literal-minded, this installation is representing – figuratively – the planting of forests around the world. There is no direct claim of this actually being a forest."

Are you inspired by The Forest for Change? Join the discussion ›

Haus im Obstgarten is a geometric timber house in a traditional Austrian village

"Wow, that is just wonderful" says reader

Commenters are critiquing a house in Austria, which Firm Architekten built using timber from the client's own forest and materials sourced within 50km.

"This is lovely," said Obinna. "The form is simple yet compelling. It sits nicely in the surroundings."

RD agreed: "Wow, that is just wonderful. What a lovely warm, neat and pristine design. The only thing missing is a picture of that great panoramic view – what a tease."

Zea Newland was less keen: "I would like this very much in an urban context but it really sticks out in that tiny village of traditional farm houses. Also kind of a letdown to build a home with a small carbon footprint and then waste the earth with a self-indulgent carport."

Are you a fan of Haus im Obstgarten? Join the discussion ›

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