How can education and training develop the capacities, capabilities and competences to rapidly decarbonise both new construction and the existing building stock?
This special issue examines the options for a rapid transition within
universities and training colleges to equip students with new knowledge and
skills. Solutions involve the coordination of a wide
range of issues: educational and training pedagogies, curricular change,
governance and policy leadership, changes to the roles of teachers and
certification bodies.
What does the climate emergency mean for organisations and the workforce responsible for creating, operating and
maintaining a sustainable and healthy built environment? They need to have the
capacities, capabilities (knowledge, skills and attitude) and competencies to rapidly
decarbonise built environments and reduce environmental degradation. However, this
workforce currently lacks the appropriate low-carbon skills at national and
global levels.
This raises new needs for the present educational and training
pedagogies, curricula and practices for the many different construction disciplines
and trades.
This Special Issue therefore targets
the need to rapidly mainstream zero carbon approaches in initial education as a
crucial first step. It deliberately focuses on the foundational training given
to built environment students. Three key questions arise regarding this initial step:
How can education and training be rapidly changed to ensure the creation of
zero-carbon built environments?
How can this transition be implemented successfully?
What positive examples and models can be drawn upon or adapted?
Answers to these questions involve
mainstreaming, policy and leadership, transitioning, teaching (pedagogical
theory, practice and organisational structures), upskilling and certification
and are addressed in this Special Issue. The intent is to precipitate further thought, discussion
and actions at many different levels to ensure education and training are fit
to meet the urgent challenges of the climate emergency.
To promote a wider international dialogue, two virtual events considered
what constitutes a rapid change agenda and roadmap for built environment
education. One event was hosted by a leading UK building industry think tank,
The EDGE on 1 February 2021 (chaired by
Bill Gething, University of the West of England) and the other was hosted on 8
February 2021 by the Carbon
Leadership Forum, a leading edge organisation for change in the US,
(chaired by Anthony Hickling, Carbon Leadership Forum).
Education and training are identified as a key means
of reducing carbon emissions from buildings to help address the climate
emergency. Institutional, industry and organisational responses are shown to be
failing in this regard. This editorial introduces the themes and individual papers in the
special issue and then explores the current state of the art through pedagogy, theory,
training, policy, practice and standards. These areas are interrogated through
three fundamental questions. How can education and training be rapidly changed
to ensure the creation of zero-carbon built environments? How can this transition
be implemented successfully? What positive examples and models can be drawn
upon or adapted? In proposing an agenda for change, a new approach to education
is set out which combines learning outcomes with new standards and personal
values within a continual questioning and holding to account of all
stakeholders involved through evidenced outcomes. This draws on evidence from
the special issue and Capability Theory which allies competency with personhood
to create capability through agency. The process to make this change requires: (1)
government intervention, to ensure that the lowest common denominator is zero-carbon
best practice within a negotiated, holistic approach to developing the built
environment sustainably; (2) new ethical, interdisciplinary and collective educational
working practices underpinned by new pedagogical theory and accreditation processes;
and (3) rapid auditing and upskilling in climate literacy to bring pressure to
bear on governments and institutions to carry out reforms.
The global policy challenge of responding to climate change
comprises a ‘super-wicked’ problem which consistently defies solution. Despite
the UK government’s commitment to zero carbon by 2050, there is little clarity
on how this ambitious target is going to be achieved. Even at the level of
individual buildings there is a perennial risk of unintended consequences if top-down
targets are pursued in isolation of other considerations. The quest for zero
carbon is hence embedded within ongoing processes of narrative contestation,
and inextricably intertwined with issues of professional identity. It is
contended that design is an inherently social process which continues
throughout a building’s lifecycle. It is within this context that designers
seek to accommodate zero-carbon targets alongside a multiple of other
priorities. Hence, any radical shift in the nature of educational provision may
well prove to be counter-productive. Yet, much more could undoubtedly be done during
education to incubate the quest for low carbon as an essential component of
professional identity. There is a need for professionals continuously to hold
others to account on the basis of the plausibility of their zero-carbon narratives.
Of equal importance is the need to ensure that built-environment professionals
continue to respond to the changing policy landscape.
Policy relevance: The global policy challenge of responding to human-induced climate
change defies technological solution. While the aspiration of zero-carbon buildings
has been applauded by the built-environment professions, it remains unclear how
this ambitious target is going to be realised in practice. Designers are
routinely required to accommodate zero-carbon targets alongside multiple other
priorities. Hence, any focus on the single criterion of zero carbon in
isolation of other considerations risks being untenable. Built-environment
professionals will hence limit their ability to influence if they allow
themselves to become single-issue activists. This remains true irrespective of
the severity of the pending climate crisis. But there are positive steps that
can be taken. University educators could do much more to encourage students to
embrace the quest for zero carbon as an essential part of their professional identity,
and to encourage them to project this identity by continuously challenging the
status quo.
Sustainable design for carbon-neutral buildings requires a
thorough understanding of environmental building performance. The urgent need
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions radically creates additional demands for architectural
education and practice. These demands challenge conventional educational building
design and architecture programs. A new pedagogical approach to the
architectural studio is presented that specifically responds to this challenge.
A highly structured 10-stage workflow for architectural design equips students
with knowledge, tools, and processes to integrate and predict dynamic
performances of light, sun, heat, and air movement in their design decisions. This
pedagogical approach has been used in ARCH 601, a required sustainable design
studio in the second year of the professional Master of Architecture program at
Iowa State University, US. A specific emphasis is placed on the iterative
feedback between daylighting, natural ventilation, and the building’s
enclosure. In an effort to understand the impact of this pedagogical approach on
the career of former students, a survey was sent to the graduates of the past
five years. A majority reported the positive learning outcomes and importance
to their current career.
Practice relevance: The architectural profession is moving
toward the creation of carbon-neutral buildings. A new approach to
architectural education is shown to equip architecture students to meet this
challenge. An architectural studio approach allows students to integrate and
predict the dynamic performances of light, sun, heat, and air movement, based
on using an innovative, highly structured workflow method. An alumni survey
provides insights into the relevance and impact of this approach on their
career. Learning these skills made architectural students better equipped to
address sustainable design in their career. The workflow can be easily adopted
by other architectural courses and practices. This can help to accelerate the
education of architectural students towards carbon neutrality.
Students of architecture are often inadequately prepared to
address the consequences of climate change. Among the factors contributing to
this, traditional design studio pedagogies tend to privilege individual
ownership of projects instead of promoting cooperation and collaboration. This
traditional focus on individual projects has the effect of minimizing the cognitive diversity that can be
brought to bear within the development of projects, and that new knowledge is
created through interactive processes based on the sharing and integration of
previously unshared knowledge. A new studio pedagogy is presented in which
cognitive diversity is foregrounded by means of shifting away from individual
ownership of work and towards groupings of works and students. Periodic discussions
focus on works grouped by thematic commonalities and re-assigned ownership
based on interest, self-identified strengths (skills they can contribute or
teach), or deficits (skills they need to learn), rather than authorship. Evidence
from implementation reveals this process supports the creation of new knowledge
in a short period of time (a 6.5-week studio) and students learn skills related
to quantification of performance measures and develop capabilities to transform
existing buildings to be net-positive contributors to their communities.
Practice relevance: The presented pedagogical method, entitled ‘Shifting Allegiances,’
is easy to replicate and flexible for customization. It does not require larger
curricular or program changes and is not bound to specific content. It can be
implemented by an individual instructor in a single studio section. An emphasis
on shared student authorship, cooperative structures, and collaboration led to
a learning process based on productive comparisons of student work. Comparisons
in students’ energy modeling results due to in-depth knowledge of, and
participation in, their colleagues’ work became second nature to the students. This
led to the acquisition of new capabilities enabling students to use a variety
of strategies to achieve a 70% reduction in energy demand over the current
baseline; this was augmented further with the use of photovoltaics. Other
aspects (water, waste, resources), selected by the students, are also actively
reduced to meet net-zero goals.
What are recent architectural graduates’ perceptions about the level
of knowledge required of interns entering architectural practice and the suitability
of architectural education? Research is presented that examines recent alumni’s
engagement with environmental sustainability while in school. Two aspects of
their educational experience are surveyed: their readiness for sustainable design
work and their familiarity with the benefits of reusing existing buildings. Recent
alumni of the Virginia Tech School of Architecture + Design were asked to
explain the areas of practice for which they were best and least prepared, to
identify additional educational topics they would have found useful, to name
the key purposes and priorities of the discipline of architecture, and to articulate
changes they wished to see in schools of architecture. The results point to a
current pedagogy where the tacit and explicit knowledge that is critical to the
adoption of sustainable approaches to design of new and retrofit structures is
undervalued in architectural education. Suggestions from the literature and strategies
to ameliorate this situation are presented.
Practice relevance: Two basic areas of literacy necessary for graduating architecture
students are addressed. The first is readiness for environmentally sustainable
work, which includes understanding building science concepts. Results of rating
and open-ended survey questions indicate that many recent undergraduate alumni
feel a sense of obligation to protect the natural environment through their
design efforts, but do not claim facility with tangible means to achieve this
goal in the design of buildings. The second is appreciation of the existing
building fabric, which involves engaging a range of preservation and reuse strategies
that preserve the embodied energy present in existing structures. Many alumni
felt their education did not prepare them for renovation and reuse work that is
often prevalent in their current practices. Architectural educators can take an
active role to anticipate the changing needs of the profession and adjust their
curricula to provide appropriate capabilities.
Low and zero-carbon building certification programmes typically focus on emissions caused by building operation and/or material extraction and manufacturing activities. However, ‘end-of-life’ issues involving the reuse, remanufacture or recycling potential of embodied energy-intensive components are often overlooked. As a result, training and certification in this field tends to be diagnostic and observational rather than proactive and anticipatory. To ensure that vocational workers have appropriate capabilities to recycle or reuse building components fully, a training and certification programme is necessary that focuses on end-of-life material recovery potential. A framework is presented for recovery of building products and the certification system for workers. The system rates recovery potential at both the material and assembly levels through a series of evaluation criteria. This assessment is translated into a product labelling scheme as well as a training and certification programme for vocation workers involved in the production, supply and installation chains of recovery-oriented products.
Practice relevance: Material recovery training in the built environment is currently limited and lacks a holistic view of the entire recovery chain. A certification system targeting material recovery could help propel a transition to circular consumption models in the built environment. Vocational training based on a full supply chain view of the end-of-life sector would be essential for a transition to a circular economy.
Architectural education and training can
help ensure low-carbon emission for projects. Despite some broad initiatives to
address this, there are still gaps in the curricula, theory and practices. The current
pedagogical trends and approaches in Bangladesh are identified and examined for
how climate mitigation is addressed in the architecture curriculum. This has
revealed a lack of awareness, limited education and training, and inadequate
pedagogical (i.e. teaching) approaches for low-carbon education in architecture
curricula. A lack of alignment exists between curricula orientation and the national
agenda for climate change and low-carbon development. In order to integrate a
sustainable low-carbon education in the architecture pedagogy, a set of recommendations
for pedagogical approaches, education and training framework is proposed to
offer crucial guidance to academia and other relevant stakeholders.
Practice relevance: Bangladesh is acutely affected by climate
vulnerability due to its geographical location in the Ganges Delta. Although mitigation
and low-carbon development policies are part of the national agenda, this has
not been incorporated into the additional capabilities required by architects
to deliver this. Low-carbon design and sustainability issues in architectural curricula
are still in the initial phases of development. A lack of awareness, inadequate
education and training, and lack of alignment between curricula orientation and
the national agenda are identified as important factors. A set of scalable
solutions and recommendations for education and training for architectural students
is suggested.
Achieving zero carbon requires major changes in buildings and construction practices, but both remain very hard to
achieve. The UK construction sector operates in a low-skills equilibrium,
whereby poor quality assurance and significant design–performance gaps accompany
low educational attainment and low wages. Skills debates often focus too
narrowly on the supply of skill, but consideration also needs to be given to
skill demand and use in the workplace. An evaluation framework for zero-carbon
construction is proposed in which types, orders, and domains of learning are
explained and differentiated. Competence is presented as a bundle of learning
attributes including theoretical knowledge, practical skill and integrity of character.
Each type of learning operates in hierarchical orders and can apply in
different domains: from the narrowest focus on individual tasks to broader
domains of occupation and industry. This evaluation framework is used to
analyse previous research with low-carbon pioneers, showing how higher orders
of learning need to be applied on projects, in firms, networks and business
models. If the construction industry is to achieve these levels of learning,
and apply them regularly in mainstream practice, then fundamental changes are
necessary to the structure of employment as well as educational reforms.
Policy relevance: The UK construction sector currently operates in a low-skills
equilibrium which negatively impacts the capabilities to produce low-energy
buildings. Research with low-carbon pioneers shows how higher orders of
learning need to be applied to projects, in firms, networks and business models. Higher
levels of occupational competence should be the goal, combining theoretical
knowledge, practical skill and quality of character (acting responsibly and
with integrity). The achievement of higher level competences in mainstream practice will require significant changes to
the structure of employment involving labour market reforms and higher levels
of accreditation and professionalisation of construction vocations. Meaningful
educational and training reform requires industry reform at the same time to
create the appropriate demand pull.
Nearly zero-energy building (NZEB) requires the training of
millions of construction workers and significant upgrading of vocational
education and training (VET) systems across the European Union. This paper
shows how an approach to VET based only on learning outcomes and targeting
specific skills is too narrow and lacking in depth to allow for the systematic
application of theoretical low-energy construction (LEC) knowledge to practice
and develop NZEB expertise in the workplace. Theoretically broader, deeper,
more technical and interdisciplinary expertise is needed to build to LEC
standards and meet European Performance in Buildings Directive (EPBD) targets.
Instead, VET for LEC has been largely confined to short and task-specific
continuing vocational education and training (CVET) courses, illustrated in the
cases of both Slovenia and Ireland and ranging from a narrow, learning outcomes
approach to a broader, standards-based approach linking theoretical
considerations to specific applications. Mainstreaming the knowledge, skills
and competences required for NZEB into initial vocational education and
training (IVET) curricula is rare. Though less successful in Finland, it is
achieved in Belgian construction IVET, which takes a standards-based approach,
successfully embeds LEC elements, and seeks to overcome occupational boundaries
and develop a holistic understanding of the construction process.
Policy
and practice relevance: The emphasis on a standards-based, as opposed
to a learning outcomes-based, approach to VET for LEC is of relevance to VET
practitioners and policy-makers alike, especially given the preoccupation
across Europe just with developing specific ‘skills’ through CVET. Broader
construction occupational profiles and qualifications are essential for the
cross-occupational knowledge and coordination required for successful NZEB,
implying a transformation and upgrading of VET systems in many countries. The
examples given from Irish CVET and Belgian IVET are valuable in showing what
can be done to incorporate LEC elements. In highlighting the strengths and
weaknesses of different VET systems in meeting NZEB requirements, the paper is
relevant for industry and unions in illustrating the significance of social
partnership, the need to overcome the fragmentation of the construction process
and the high-quality VET essential to addressing climate change.
The urgent transition to a zero-carbon
economy requires building professionals to be supportive of, and prepared for,
delivering zero-carbon buildings. Building professionals are important ‘middle
actors’ who can either enable or inhibit such societal transitions.This paper explores building professionals’
perspectives on delivering zero-carbon buildings, leading to a practical
synthesis of knowledge and skill requirements and training pathways. It draws
on the middle-out perspective (MOP) and secondary analysis of three UK case studies.
The MOP suggests that middle actors in a system are not perfectly responsive to
policy push or market pull. Instead, they exert their own agency and capacity
downstream to customers and clients, sideways to other middle actors and,
occasionally, upstream to policy-makers.The data comprise:
interviews and a small survey with building professionals on energy efficiency and
refurbishment; the observation of a specific commercial office building design
and development and a workshop to identify zero-carbon knowledge and skill
needs of middle actors. Building professionals addressed in this paper include vocational trades,
engineers, designers, project managers and ‘clerks of works’ (site-based quality technicians). Although formal training pathways for these roles differ, each can develop expertise ‘sideways’ interacting between professions.
Practice relevance Collaboration between academia, vocational training and industry could support sideways initiatives to better enable
delivery of zero-carbon buildings. Policy-makers and regulators need to create routes to capture, listen to and use the perspectives
of building professionals. At present, these actors have very little upstream
influence. Middle-actor groups in construction undertake different activities, but share training
routes, knowledge support systems and professional networks. These routes, systems and networks would allow actors to facilitate change from the ‘middle-out’
in a way complementary to top-down change driven by policy and bottom-up
changes led by citizens. Training routes can include formal, on-the-job (informal) or e-learning. Prioritising on-the-job
knowledge-sharing could promote upskilling. Roles such as a clerk of works could assist in overseeing construction processes. Vocational professionals are the priority group of middle actors to build capacity,
knowledge and influence.
Matti Kuittinen(Aalto University) reflects on the UN’s
29th Climate COP, leaving a sense of disappointment and frustration among
delegates and observers. The event yielded a commitment of only $0.3 trillion
for climate funding, falling drastically short of the $1.3 trillion requested
by developing nations. COP29 saw the broader recognition of the role of the
built environment – including the launch of the International Council for
Buildings and Climate (ICBC).
The discovery, after the Grenfell Tower fire disaster in
2017, that hundreds of blocks of flats in the UK had been clad in flammable cladding raises
serious questions about the competency of the developers of flats and the legal
and regulatory environment in which they operate. Bernard Rimmer(formerly
a director of engineering companies and also University of Reading)explains the conditions that allowed developers to
create unsafe buildings, and proposals are made to require developers to design
and construct to higher standards and to take full responsibility for the safety,
durability and performance of the buildings they produce.
This paper explores building professionals’
perspectives on delivering zero-carbon buildings, leading to a practical
synthesis of knowledge and skill requirements and training pathways. It draws
on the middle-out perspective (MOP) and secondary analysis of three UK case studies.
The MOP suggests that middle actors in a system are not perfectly responsive to
policy push or market pull. Instead, they exert their own agency and capacity
downstream to customers and clients, sideways to other middle actors and,
occasionally, upstream to policy-makers.The data comprise:
interviews and a small survey with building professionals on energy efficiency and
refurbishment; the observation of a specific commercial office building design
and development and a workshop to identify zero-carbon knowledge and skill
needs of middle actors. Building professionals addressed in this paper include vocational trades,
engineers, designers, project managers and ‘clerks of works’ (site-based quality technicians). Although formal training pathways for these roles differ, each can develop expertise ‘sideways’ interacting between professions. 
Latest Commentaries
COP29: Flop for Climate, Recognition of the Built Environment
Matti Kuittinen (Aalto University) reflects on the UN’s 29th Climate COP, leaving a sense of disappointment and frustration among delegates and observers. The event yielded a commitment of only $0.3 trillion for climate funding, falling drastically short of the $1.3 trillion requested by developing nations. COP29 saw the broader recognition of the role of the built environment – including the launch of the International Council for Buildings and Climate (ICBC).
Addressing Building Failures in Flat Developments
The discovery, after the Grenfell Tower fire disaster in 2017, that hundreds of blocks of flats in the UK had been clad in flammable cladding raises serious questions about the competency of the developers of flats and the legal and regulatory environment in which they operate. Bernard Rimmer (formerly a director of engineering companies and also University of Reading) explains the conditions that allowed developers to create unsafe buildings, and proposals are made to require developers to design and construct to higher standards and to take full responsibility for the safety, durability and performance of the buildings they produce.