Hasta La Ideas

Architects Katy Ghahremani, Shawn Adams and Sumele Adelana explore the link between sustainability and inclusivity in the third episode of our Climate Salon podcast series with SketchUp.

Listen to the episode below or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts to catch the whole series.

The third episode, titled Designing diversity into buildings, explores the role of architects in facilitating a just transition to a green economy and creating universal access to sustainable, liable and climate-resilient buildings.

Jennifer Hahn, host of the podcast series and Dezeen’s design and environment editor, spoke to Ghahremani, partner at Make Architects, Adams, writer and co-founder of Poor Collective, and Adelana, architectural designer and product specialist at Trimble SketchUp.

The panel argued that buildings that cater for a diverse range of communities are inherently sustainable.

“Of course there’s a link between places and spaces that are sustainable and diversity and inclusivity,” said Ghahremani.

She went on to describe how the practice of adaptive reuse of buildings is more sustainable than knocking down old buildings and building new ones, while having the potential to welcome new communities of people into existing spaces which hadn’t previously accommodated them.

“Retrofit is great,” she said. “We love doing retrofitting, because you get a building that has a narrative and a history already that you can build on rather than starting from scratch. And that makes it so much richer, it’s already part of the community.”

According to Adams, adaptive reuse projects need to be better celebrated in architectural media, awards programmes and academia.

“If we want to see more architects and designers repurposing buildings and pushing for retrofit, one of the things that we need to do is make it more sexy,” he stated. “We need to be seeing refurbished or repurposed dilapidated buildings that have been given a new lease of life celebrated on the front cover of magazines.”

The conversation is the third episode of Dezeen and SketchUp’s Climate Salon, a podcast series exploring the role that architects and designers can play in tackling climate change.

Across six episodes, Dezeen is speaking to architects, designers and engineers to explore how to better collaborate across their respective disciplines to create a more cohesive response to climate change.

The panel agreed that buildings that better serve the needs of diverse groups within a community are likely to have a longer life and be used to their fullest potential, reducing wasteful uses of space, energy and materials.

“When I think of a sustainable space, I think of a space that’s respected,” said Adams. “If a space is respected, then people want to ensure that there’s continuity in that space, and the space lives on for decades, if not centuries.”

Ghahremani explained the importance of pubic consultations which include representatives from all communities who will inhabit a building, rather than just those who more readily offer their thoughts.

“When we start talking to the local community local businesses, what we find is that there are always voices that are loud and organised, and like to portray themselves as the voice of the community,” she explained.

“What we really need to find are all those other voices that are quieter and further away, because we want to bring everyone in. We don’t want to design places just for the people who are engaged in the process, we want to bring in everybody else.”

Adams stated that educating local communities and young people about architecture gives them a greater understanding of their place within their urban environment, enabling them to better articulate their needs when called upon to consult on a development.

“When [people] recognise the power of architecture and design, an interest can then be developed… because they understand architecture, now they feel as if they can make a change in their area, or they can contribute positively to that area.”

Adelana described the way in which technological advancements have the potential to make the design process more accessible to future inhabitants of buildings when they’re being involved in the design process.

“We can leverage technology in a way that opens things up to people that in the past would have shut them off from it,” she said.

“If you can immerse me in the reality of it in three dimensions, or experience reality with a headset for example, then I can tell you: hey, this space is not working for me, or: in my culture, where I come from, this colour is pretty bad.”

Each episode of the Climate Salon podcast provides insight into how specialists across diverse disciplines can work in conjunction to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Produced by Dezeen’s in-house creative team, Climate Salon episodes will be released over the coming months along with opinion pieces by SketchUp relating to the topics featured in the series.

The third episode is now available to download in advance of the 3 Days of Design festival in Copenhagen. Subscribe now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

SketchUp is a piece of 3D design software used to model architectural and interior design projects, product designs, civil and mechanical engineering and more. It is owned by construction technology company Trimble.

Partnership content

The Climate Salon podcast is produced by Dezeen in partnership with SketchUp. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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