AJ Climate Champions podcast – Sofie Pelsmakers: ‘Sustainable architecture is architecture on steroids’

In this six-episode series, Hattie Hartman and her co-host George Morgan interview changemakers and innovators who are transforming architecture as we know it by designing in ways that respect planetary boundaries. Our six champions will offer inspiration as well as sharing essential knowledge about design in an era of climate emergency.

In episode three, Pelsmakers, author of the Environmental Design Pocketbook, describes sustainable architecture as ‘super architecture on steroids’, an architecture that must ‘perform’. She discusses the critical importance of a holistic approach to sustainable design, and the urgent need for top-down architecture curriculum reform. Also featured in the episode is a short chat with Scott McAulay, architecture graduate and founder of the Anthropocene Architecture School.

You can catch up on the previous episodes of AJ Climate Champions with Maria Smith here and Annalie Riches here.

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About Sofie Pelsmakers

Pelsmakers is assistant professor in sustainable housing design at Tampere University in Finland. She trained as an architect in Belgium before coming to the UK in 1997 where she completed two Masters in sustainable design at the University of East London and a PhD at the Bartlett, alongside stints in practice at ECD Architects and Levitt Bernstein. She was selected as an RIBA Role Model (2015) and was one of two Bartlett PhD Alumni Role Models (2017).

In 2020, Pelsmakers secured a €300,000 grant with five other European universities to develop an online climate emergency curriculum. She is also preparing a climate curriculum handbook with colleagues in the UK and Denmark, and is currently setting up a Nordic chapter of ACAN, the Architects Climate Action Network.

Show notes: resources mentioned in this episode

AECB The Wood from the Trees
Accelerating change in architectural education by Sofie Pelsmakers and Fionn Stevenson
The Environmental Design Pocketbook
Energy People Buildings by Judit Kimpian, Hattie Hartman and Sofie Pelsmakers
Design Studio Everything Needs to Change – Architecture and the Climate Emergency (RIBA, 2021) ed. Sofie Pelsmakers and Nick Newman

About Scott McAulay

McAulay is an architecture graduate in Glasgow and founder of the Anthropocene Architecture School – an educational response to the climate emergency.