In early 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the last part of their sobering review of climate science. Hard and fast changes are required now to avert a climate crisis. Architects, landscape architects, and urban designers need to urgently respond to the challenge.
At the MSA, we have worked hard to identify areas of strength in our educational provision and to make improvements to ensure that our education will deliver climate literate graduates. New Skills sessions helped BA students to engage with carbon counting and material choices. Across the BA and MArch studios, sustainability has been embedded in the requirements of studio projects. This year also saw the establishment of atelier ‘Some Kind of Nature’, which places the climate and biodiversity emergency at the heart of its teaching. In the Humanities, the Architecture, Climate and Society course welcomed the addition of Masters of Landscape Architecture students. In Technologies, students continue to learn about cutting edge technologies to reduce carbon emissions including innovative reuse projects.
We invited a range of leading academics and practitioners to lecture at the MSA in this field, including Simon Sturgis and Professor Marco Casagrande, particularly during COP 26 in Glasgow in November 2021. Our MSSA Climate Action group continues to grow in numbers and activities. This included a field trip, led by Professor Stephen Hodder, to Hodder + Partners’ award-winning The Welcome Centre at RHS Gardens Bridgewater.
2022/3 will see us further strengthening climate change education across our programmes that will build on our strengths of diversity and inclusion to enable our students to engage with the plurality of critical positions on approaches to addressing the climate and biodiversity emergency.