Climate Futures Symposium
Schedule

Welcome Remarks by Jen Maigret

9:15 AM – 9:30 PM

Jen Maigret, Climate Futures Director, Professor of Architecture, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan

Art, Design, and Critical Digital [Infra]Structures

9:30 AM – 10:45 AM

This interdisciplinary session explores the role of art, design, and scholarship that uses digital media and methods to critique the extractive project of digital data [infra]structures. Panelists include artists, designers, and scholars whose work gives image and language to the pressing concerns around the ecological impacts of digital technology. What happens when we make visible what was previously invisible, ignored, or hidden from view? Once our attention has been gained, how can we leverage this focus towards action, resistance, or change? What collaborative opportunities can we foster between creative practitioners and research scholars? Our conversation will range from the technical to the theoretical as we grapple with the digital’s role in facing our impending climate catastrophe.

Moderator: Ellie Abrons, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan

Speakers

• Mél Hogan, Director, Environmental Media Lab, Queen’s University
• Alice Bucknell, SCI-Arc
• Deborah Lopez, The Bartlett School of Architecture and Pareid Architecture
• Hadin Charbel, The Bartlett School of Architecture and Pareid Architecture

Degrowth and design for a better future within limits

11:00 AM – 12:15 PM

A growing cadre of distinguished scientists and economists are converging on the idea that limitless economic growth is incompatible with any path to an equitable and sustainable planetary future. Within the design fields, this realization demands more than just the adoption of energy-efficient building methods; it necessitates a reduction in overall material and energy usage, less construction, design for less energy-intensive lifestyles and dwelling practices, and new visions of society beyond extractivism and over-consumption. This interdisciplinary panel will establish the imperative for degrowth, the possibility of a good life within limits, and will speculate on the roles of designers within a vibrant post-growth society.

Moderator: McLain Clutter, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan

Speakers

• Julia Steinberger, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
• Neyran Turan, University of California Berkeley and NEMESTUDIO
• Kate Soper, London Metropolitan University
• Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
• Mireille Roddier, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan

Lunch Break

12:30 PM – 1:30 PM

Welcome Remarks by Anya Sirota

1:30 PM – 1:45 PM

Anya Sirota, Associate Dean for Academic Initiatives, Associate Professor in Architecture, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan

Climate Resilient Communities

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM

Buildings and transportation are the two largest sources of GHG emissions in most cities. Therefore, improving building efficiency is one of the most important ways that cities can reduce their GHG emissions. While implementing greener standards for new construction is important, we need to direct more attention toward retrofitting existing buildings, specifically commercial and multifamily buildings. In this session, we will hear how the City of Toronto began the Better Buildings Program (BBP) in 1999 to work with property owners and building managers to increase energy efficiency by offering technical support and financial incentives. Under this program, hundreds of buildings have been retrofitted and the BBP has continued to develop new programs, such as the High-Rise Retrofit Improvement Program. In Toronto, where emissions from buildings contribute 58% of their total emissions, this program is key if Toronto is to make its ambitious 2040 goal of Net Zero.  The second speaker, still unconfirmed at this time, will address how another large US city is rethinking building energy efficiency for new construction by implementing district heating and cooling systems. In this session, we will investigate the details that helped make these ambitious projects possible and look for transferable lessons.

Moderator: Larissa Larsen, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan

Speakers

• Duncan MacLellan, Toronto Better Building Partnerships
• Kevin Bush, Cadmus Group’s Resilient Infrastructure Practice
• Brian Swett, Chief Climate Officer, City of Boston

Climate Conscious Construction

3:15 PM – 4:30 PM

Climate conscious and ecological paradigms prompt a rethinking of inherited assumptions, practices, and biases regarding building materials, design methodologies, construction practices, and the role(s) of computation and technology within the built environment. The imperative of decarbonization is instigating transformation across the whole value chain of the building industry toward circular resource and whole building life-cycle approaches coupled with a consciousness of socio-ecological entanglements. This panel will address new forms of design, construction, and material methods that position computational design and fabrication toward regenerative building possibilities.  

Moderator: Kathy Velikov, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan

Speakers

• Kelly Alvarez Doran, Ha/f Climate Design
• Leslie Lok, Cornell University
• Jane Scott, Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment, Newcastle University
• Tsz Yan Ng, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan
• Andreas Theodoridis, NYIT – SoAD

Closing Remarks by Lydia Kallipoliti

4:45 PM – 5:30 PM

Lydia Kallipoliti, Director of the Advanced Architectural Design Program, Columbia University GSAPP

Climate Futures Exhibition – Opening Reception at Liberty Annex

6:30 PM – 8:30 PM

Liberty Research Annex, Taubman College, University of Michigan

305 W Liberty St, Ann Arbor, MI 48103

Climate Futures presents recent and ongoing research by the faculty of Taubman College that reconfigures material economies, surfaces obscured lifeways, and projects different stories. Together the work tinkers with our present condition, nudging us toward a position from which we can imagine other circumstances, situations, and futures of being together.

Exhibition designed and curated by Stratton Coffman, in consultation with Anya Sirota and Kathy Velikov