Architectural Education for Sustainability

Abstract

Owing to the need for sustainable environments in cities and other settlements, the real challenge for twenty-first-century architecture and architectural education is to ensure that, during the student’s education, serious attention is placed on the relationship between architecture and society and in the wider context of sustainability. In the last two decades, the growing awareness of the reciprocal relationship between architecture and the urban environment has led to the restructuring of both undergraduate and graduate programmes in architectural education, and the current architectural directives and associations require undergraduates and graduates to study the urban and social dimensions of architectural design. However, even when architects and educators take the urban environment into consideration, their main focus is on the visual aspect alone. In fact, it is equally as important for the design to fulfill the physical, social, emotional and spiritual needs of the people who use the environment and to ensure local distinctiveness together with a sense of place. In line with these points, this paper, following a critical review of the conventional type of architectural education, using the author’s own teaching experiences in two different architectural schools and based on research and observations at the University of Michigan, a university that is well-known for its environmental sensitivity and who presents positive efforts towards sustainable environments, also makes recommendations towards a ‘greener’ and more ‘sustainable’ focus within architectural education.