ALD4101HS / ARC3400HS
Instructor: Ted Kesik
Meeting Section: LEC0101
Wednesdays 3:00 - 6:00 p.m.

This elective course is aimed at Daniels Faculty ALD PhD and eligible 3rd-year MARC students.

The idea of taking a ‘cradle to cradle’ approach to the design of buildings is not novel, but the means by which to integrate the social, environmental and economic aspects of a building over its useful life, while observing cultural aspirations for architecture, have not been explicitly formulated and implemented across the design professions. This is a formidable challenge because the cultural aspirations for architecture have evolved beyond their traditional roots and now encompass: human health and wellbeing; environmental stewardship; equity; diversity and inclusion; affordability/accessibility; resilience and climate adaptation; Indigenous reconciliation and restitution - all contextualized under the rubric of sustainability.

There is now and in the foreseeable future no aspect of a building that can be taken for granted. Everything that goes into making the building is now considered critical from conception to design, its materiality, construction, commissioning through to its operation and maintenance, and eventual deconstruction/demolition/repurposing. And even where the building is situated, its supporting infrastructure and how it is financed make a difference in relation to urban planning, energy and municipal services, and the marketplace of buildings. The built environment has become a prosthetic extension of humanity and its life cycle vitality underpins the survival of civilization.

This course explores an array of contemporary issues such as life cycle analysis, carbon footprint, circularity, the environmental impacts of buildings, adaptability & functional obsolescence, the performance gap, post-occupancy evaluations, etc. The course is premised on an emerging awareness that building design can no longer be based on “a single snapshot of a frozen moment in time” but should reflect a more organic, evolutionary and adaptive framework of inhabitation that considers the whole life cycle of buildings – not a static artifact, but a dynamic, unfolding process.

Students will be provided an opportunity to explore a variety of trajectories according to their interests. The core of the course is a series of lectures and seminars, but students can choose to pursue course work that may vary from papers and case studies, to critical essays and theoretical constructs, through to speculative design propositions. Students can choose to approach the subject matter from any number of perspectives, whether it is history/theory or technics/planning or design, including pedagogy and climate action competency. Course work may be incorporated into thesis projects.