Environmental impact in the learning of the architectural design

Abstract

The immediate future will be characterized by the double environmental crisis that is already being felt in the present: the climate change and the depletion of natural resources, with their consequences in the population’s health. Schools of architecture in Spain do not seem to have incorporated these two variables into their curricula or have not done so systematically in the core of their training: the architectural design as opportunity to synthesize the knowledge and skills obtained in specialized subjects. Today, everything seems to indicate that decisions aimed at guaranteeing the well-being of the population in this context of environmental emergency will be hasty and improvised. A consequence of this possibility would be that the resilience of buildings and infrastructures would prevail over the cultural component of architecture. It is therefore necessary to propose strategies for the integrated design of buildings and public spaces that can be a viable alternative to urgent and fragmented measures. This article analyses a simple method of introducing these aspects into architectural project learning and its implementation, analysing the effect of simple quantitative approaches to environmental impact on design decisions.