Carbon and the Built Environment

The built environment is emerging as an area of focus for climate solutions. The IPCC will release its first ever report on climate change and cities, covering mitigation. In this course we will explore the role of design in decarbonization through a multiscalar lens that covers the realms of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and urban planning through lectures, site-visits, and research projects. We will look at the role of heritage preservation, the history of quantifying embodied and operational carbon, and changes in users and craft. To understand how we arrived at our present carbon-intensive forms we will delve into historical precedent to understand other ways of making buildings, organizing cities, designing landscapes, and sourcing materials.