ARC3503HF
Instructor: Ted Kesik
Prerequisite Courses: Open to any PhD student, or M.Arch. student that has successfully completed Year 1 M.Arch. program or equivalent, or by permission of instructor.

The idea of taking a ‘cradle to cradle’ approach to the design of buildings is not novel, but the means by which to integrate the social, environmental and economic aspects of a building over its useful life, while observing cultural aspirations for architecture, have not been explicitly formulated and implemented across the building design professions. This is a formidable challenge because the cultural aspirations for architecture have evolved beyond their traditional roots and now encompass: human health and wellbeing; environmental stewardship; equity; diversity and inclusion; affordability/accessibility; resilience and climate adaptation; and Indigenous reconciliation and restitution - all contextualized under the rubric of sustainability.

There is now, and in the foreseeable future, no aspect of a building that can be taken for granted. Everything that goes into making the building is now considered critical from conception to design, its materiality, construction, commissioning through to its operation and maintenance, and eventual deconstruction/demolition/repurposing. And even where the building is situated, its supporting infrastructure and how it is financed make a difference in relation to urban planning, energy and municipal services, and the marketplace of buildings. The built environment has become a prosthetic extension of humanity and its life cycle vitality underpins the survival of civilization.

This elective course recognizes that while the role of the architect is evolving, we have continued to design and construct buildings for a climate that no longer exists. An understanding of the process and challenges associated with adapting existing buildings increases the onus to design new buildings that will adapt to a changing future climate and remain resilient.

The course explores an array of contemporary issues such as life cycle analysis, the whole life carbon (embodied + operational) footprint, material efficiency, circularity, sufficiency, the environmental impacts of buildings, adaptability & functional obsolescence, the performance gap, and post-occupancy evaluations. This course is premised on an emerging awareness that a building can no longer be considered a static artifact, rather it embodies a dynamic, unfolding process reflecting a more organic, evolutionary and adaptive framework of inhabitation, mass and energy flows persisting throughout the whole life cycle.

Students will be provided an opportunity to explore a variety of trajectories according to their interests. The core of the course is a series of lectures and seminars, but students can choose to pursue course work that may vary from papers and case studies to critical essays and theoretical constructs, through to speculative design propositions. Students can choose to approach the subject matter from any number of perspectives, whether it is history/theory or technics/planning or design, including pedagogy and climate action competency. Work from this course may also be incorporated into thesis projects.

The primary intention of this course is to help future-proof students by establishing a disciplinary framework for contextualizing the global imperatives for sustainability, resilience and climate change adaptation. The socially and environmentally responsible design of the built environment is driving conventional architecture practice to consider numerous additional issues and performance requirements that are challenging the foundations of traditional design thinking. This course provides students the opportunity to engage these emerging challenges related to the life cycle design of buildings on their own terms and according to their personal interests.