Abstracts

“Instead of Operating in the Landscape, We Should Blend in With It”

Ailton Krenak in Conversation with Romullo Baratto

Ailton Krenak is a renowned environmentalist, philoso­pher, writer, and poet who holds honorary doctorates from the Federal University of Minas Gerais and the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. As an Indigenous leader, he played a pivotal role in advocating for Indigenous rights, which were eventually enshrined in the 1988 Constitution of Brazil. In this interview, Krenak shares his vision for rethinking humanity’s relationship with nature. Drawing from ancestral practices, he challenges urban planning, advocates for regenerative cities modeled after forests, and warns of the approaching “point of no return” in the ecological collapse. His reflections emphasize the urgent need to build alliances with all living beings, to create a future grounded in the present and guided by ancestral wisdom.

Keywords: Environmental philosophy, indigenous knowledge, urban ecology, climate crisis

The Value of a Landscape. Material and Time

Bas Princen

Bas Princen’s photo series contrasts preservation and destruction in two landscapes: a mudbrick wall protecting an ancient Egyptian temple, and a gold mine in Surinam causing ecological devastation. Through photography, he explores how human interventions shape the environment over time.

Keywords: Landscape, photography, extraction, preservation, time

Climate Neutrality Towards a Safe and Just Future: A Renewed Ethic for the Built Environment Professionals

Greg Foliente, Carlos Enrique Caballero-Güereca, Nicolas Alaux

The clock is ticking on the climate crisis, and the choices we make today will shape the future. Since our built environment—our cities, buildings, and infrastructure—contributes significantly to human-made greenhouse gas emissions, industry stakeholders and decision makers need to lead the way, and act urgently and strategically to meet the dual goals of reducing emissions and adapting our built assets to a changing world. This article guides these professionals to better understand the challenge, and embrace bold solutions, innovative designs, and collaborative action to create a built environment that is not only sustainable but also equitable. The time for incremental change has passed—what’s needed now is a united, courageous, and determined effort to secure a liveable, just, and climate-resilient future for all.

Keywords: Net-zero, greenhouse gas emissions, carbon, mitigation, buildings, construction, real estate

Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in Construction

Ida Karlsson

The construction sector is pivotal in addressing climate change, with deep decarbonization requiring urgent action across the value chain. This article explores pathways to decarbonizing the built environment through innovative design, material efficiency, and circularity measures. It highlights the importance of sufficiency principles, prioritizing renovation and adaptive reuse over new construction, and employing hybrid systems to reduce embodied carbon emissions. Collaborative approaches and digital tools enable resource-efficient planning and emissions tracking, while cascading use of bio-based materials and electrification of processes further support emissions reductions. Key enablers include circular resource flows based on innovative business models along with policy-driven emissions caps. By integrating sufficiency measures with supply and demand-side strategies, the construction sector can align with climate goals to halve emissions before 2030 with near-zero targets achievable before 2050.

Keywords: Construction decarbonization, embodied carbon, material efficiency, circularity, sufficiency, hybrid systems, electrification, bio-based materials, cascading use, carbon reduction pathways, value chain collaboration

Yuyarina Pacha in Witoca: The Mestiza Chakra and Its Bioarchitecture

Ana María Durán Calisto

This article explores the mestiza chakra developed by the Ecuadorian bioenterprise Witoca, a regenerative, community-based agroecological system located in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Founded by Andrea López and Fabio Legarda, Witoca integrates Indigenous knowledge, sustainable agriculture, and architectural innovation to revitalize traditional polyculture systems. Through projects like the Yuyarina Pacha, a library built collaboratively with local carpenters and the Al Borde architecture collective, the initiative demonstrates how regenerative design, material experimentation, and participatory planning can foster both ecological resilience and socio-economic empowerment. The chakra is portrayed not just as a farming system but as a living, sacred landscape—a counter-model to extractivist and monocultural development. Witoca’s work challenges dominant paradigms of land use and education by embedding practices of co-design, sociobioeconomy, and ancestral knowledge within contemporary architecture and community planning. The project underscores the potential of localized, culturally rooted innovation for global sustainability transitions.

Keywords: Mestiza Chakra, Witoca, bioarchitecture, Amazonian architecture, permaculture, Indigenous knowledge, polyculture, community planning

Vegetarian Buildings: Toward a New Material Diet

Guillaume Habert, Verena Göswein, Olga Beatrice Carcassi, Francesco Pittau

What if we approached buildings like we do our diets? Just as shifting from meat-heavy consumption toward plant-based alternatives benefits both human health and the planet, rethinking the materials we use in construction could transform buildings from carbon sources into carbon sinks. This paper introduces the concept of a “material diet”: a framework for radically reimagining the way we design and construct buildings by prioritizing bio-based, low-carbon, and regenerative materials. Instead of relying on binary choices—concrete vs. timber, steel vs. stone—we propose a more nuanced approach: a material pyramid, where fast-growing, carbon-storing materials balance out the footprint of essential but emissions-intensive components. Drawing from recent case studies, including a Swiss residential project using straw bale construction, we explore how architects, engineers, and urbanists can design for net-zero and beyond. By strategically integrating bio-based materials, leveraging nature’s own humidity-regulating properties, and optimizing structural design, we outline a path toward architecture that does not merely reduce harm but actively regenerates. If we are to confront the environmental crisis through architecture, we must move beyond sustainability and embrace a material culture that actively restores the balance between construction and the planet’s natural cycles.

Keywords: Material diet, carbon sink, regenerative design, climate-positive, bio-based materials, circular building, straw bale, embodied carbon

Vernacular Design Approaches in Mediterranean Regions

Monica Lavagna, Bernardette Soust-Verdaguer, Elisabetta Palumbo, Antonio García Martínez

This article explores vernacular design approaches in Mediterranean regions as a response to environmental challenges, particularly climate change. Through four architectural case studies—from new constructions to renovations—it examines how traditional knowledge and bioclimatic strategies can inform sustainable architecture today. Projects like Casa Incantata, The Shell Passive House, 19 Social Housing Units in Palma, and The Sesga House exemplify the integration of local materials, passive design principles, and cultural context to achieve energy efficiency, thermal comfort, and long-term resilience. We argue for a balance between aesthetic and technical performance, emphasizing the importance of adapting architectural solutions to regional climates and cultural heritage. The article critiques the limitations of standardized technological approaches and highlights the value of low-tech, locally rooted solutions in achieving both mitigation and adaptation goals. By revisiting vernacular principles with contemporary methods, we propose a model for sustainable, context-sensitive architecture in Mediterranean environments.

Keywords: vernacular architecture, Mediterranean climate, passive house design, bioclimatic strategies, Zero Energy Buildings (ZEB), contextual design, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

Dialectics of Comfort 

Philippe Rahm

 “Dialectics of Comfort” explores the evolution of thermal comfort through the lens of dialectical materialism, a concept introduced by Karl Marx. Rahm examines how human activity, driven by scientific and technical advancements, has transformed nature and its influence on comfort. The text traces the relationship between material infrastructure (e.g., climate, energy sources) and social, aesthetic, and moral superstructures, emphasizing how this connection has changed over time. It also discusses the impact of energy consumption, particularly fossil fuels, on architectural design and thermal comfort, presenting a new vision of energy-efficient, post-carbon architecture that embraces variability in temperature and humidity to redefine comfort. Rahm’s work suggests a shift towards more adaptable and sustainable architectural practices in response to global challenges like climate change.

Keywords: Thermal comfort, dialectical materialism, historical materialism, energy efficiency, post-carbon design

Sphere of Life: The Architecture of Plant Performance at the Grüne Erde Breathing Headquarters

Klaus K. Loenhart

The project Grüne Erde Breathing Headquarters, designed by Klaus K. Loenhart and terrain: integral designs, is positioned at the intersection of biometeorological performance and nature-based solutions (NbS). It redefines sustainable building by integrating living systems—especially plant performance—into its spatial and climatic design. The building uses 13 planted courtyards as “mid-door spaces” to create microclimates that provide natural cooling, oxygenation, and sensory atmospheres. With a parametric structural layout, natural materials, and local energy sources, the design transcends traditional mechanical systems, aiming for a synergistic interaction between human and plant metabolisms. The project simulates an augmented forest ecosystem inside a building envelope, reimagining architecture as an active agent in climate regulation. By blurring the line between natural and technological performance, it exemplifies how architectural practice can evolve through ecological integration, sensory design, and systemic thinking for a post-anthropocentric built environment.

Keywords: Nature-based solutions (NbS), plant performance, biometeorological design, passive cooling, ecological architecture, evapotranspiration, Grüne Erde Headquarters, climate-responsive architecture

Ten Years to Change the World? RIBA Horizons 2034: The Environmental Challenge

Alice Moncaster

The global built environment is the site of almost 50 percent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. The designers of the built environment must therefore acknowledge their responsibility within the climate emergency. The creativity and decision-making power of architects possibly offers them the chance to create a paradigm-shift in approach. However, to foster collective change it is essential to understand the complexities of the challenges ahead. This article describes the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Horizons 2034 foresight programme, in particular the ‘Environmental Challenge’, considering how architecture and the building professions must change over the next decade if we are to achieve a built environment capable of sustaining our collective future on this planet.

Keywords: Carbon emissions, environmental challenge, foresight, decision-making, climate responsibility

Teaching Live Cycle Assessment: An Accessible Approach for Future Architects and Building Professionals

Vanessa Gomes, Matt Roberts

Architects play a vital role in decarbonization efforts. Architects need the skills to assess the environmental impacts of their designs while understanding how early-stage design decisions shape the environmental impacts of their final designs. However, most academic structures do not provide future architects with the skills and knowledge needed to perform life cycle assessment (LCA) nor understand the linkages between design decisions and environmental impacts. Based on experiences from teaching LCA and life cycle thinking to architecture students in Brazil and the United Kingdom, we outline our vision for providing architecture students with the skills needed by industry to navigate the ever-changing climate crisis. We highlight that not everyone needs to do a full-scale assessment, but everyone should be able to engage in conversations related to sustainability and impact reduction.

Keywords: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), education, curriculum development, architecture, teaching

Resilience-by-Design: The Netherlands as Case Study

Stefano Corbo

 The article illustrates the theoretical framework, the methodology and the outcome of “Resilience-by-Design”—a pedagogic model implemented at TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture and The Built Environment, within the Public Building Group. “Resilience-by-Design” addresses the climatic crisis from the perspective of architecture – that is, the design of buildings: how buildings can prepare for climate change, how their structure can adapt to uncertain scenarios, what spatial and material characteristics they need to acquire in order to resist future threats. In presenting several operative strategies—adaptability, reuse, modular expansion, disassembly, flexibility—, “Resilience-by-Design” places emphasis on the importance of consciously designing for and with climate change.

Keywords: public architecture, resilience, adaptability, reuse, demountability

Architecture Education for a Socioecological Turn

Sabine Hansmann

Architectural history remains strongly shaped by heroic figures and monumental objects. In critical dialogue with Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, this article advocates for a shift in focus: toward the often-overlooked, yet foundational elements—the materials, relationships, and processes that actually shape our built environment. In light of the planetary crises—in which architecture plays a central role as both a carrier of resources and a driver of emissions—a reorientation of the discipline and its teaching is imperative. This article views the current situation as a call for self-questioning—and for the development of new methodological approaches. At the heart of this discussion is the teaching-research project Material Networks at HafenCity University Hamburg. The project combines the seminar Material Stories, an open-access web platform, and an open educational resource. Students analyze the social, ecological, and political dimensions of building materials, trace their global entanglements, and develop empirically grounded material stories. This multi-perspectival approach is not presented as a solution, but as a contribution to a changing self-understanding of architecture. The goal is to foster learning in relations—connected, critical, and open to interdisciplinary collaboration. The article explores how such narratives can serve as tools to open up new perspectives in architectural education and to strengthen an understanding of socio-material entanglements—as part of a necessary and profound transformation.

Keywords: Architecture pedagogy in the Anthropocene, material stories, socioecological transition, planetary entanglements, critical architectural practice