Architecture schools can serve as laboratories for reducing energy consumption in the built environment by training students to apply the elements of degrowth, Taubman College scholar Mireille Roddier argues in a new essay.
Writing in the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE), Roddier, associate professor of architecture, makes a pressing case for how architecture can better address the climate crisis. Her essay is titled “Can We Talk about Degrowth, Yet? The Education of Architects in Light of Inconvenient Truths.”
In December, Roddier will also speak at the 2024 Fitch Colloquium in New York on the theme, “Repairing Architecture Schools.” The colloquium is a collaboration between the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, and Places Journal.
Roddier and McLain Clutter, associate professor of architecture, recently participated in a session on degrowth at Taubman College’s Climate Futures symposium. In addition, Roddier and Clutter are serving as theme editors for an upcoming issue of JAE called “Degrowth, Low-tech, and Alternative Hedonism,” and recently put out a call for papers. In September, Clutter was named interim executive editor of JAE, a position he’ll hold through April 2026.
Roddier notes that the built environment and transportation combined make up two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions, and buildings alone accounted for 42 percent of these harmful emissions in 2023. Yet, teaching and funded research in architecture schools more often feature opportunities for development of the built environment rather than strategies for its reduction.
“Although environmental sustainability has been integrated into the curricula and research agenda of North American architectural institutions, it remains constrained within an innovation imaginary that supports the growth of the economy as market-based solutions,” Roddier says.
“It is no wonder that much of the industry-sponsored research underway in schools of architecture just so happens to align with the central aims of Silicon Valley and private equity financiers.”
The competitive nature of university architecture studios focuses students’ energy on soaring production requirements, and final review presentations commonly feature multimedia productions, marketing campaigns, and publication ambitions that “contribute to the white noise of surplus production saturating the environment,” she says.
Instead, students should work collectively on projects that emphasize minimum consumption of matter, energy, and bodies. Within the studio space, focusing on specific processes and productions could later transform into environmentally conscious professional practices and work.
“The studio space is an incredible pedagogical tool for practicing, or even modeling, the management of inequalities and alternative modes of production,” Roddier says. “There are so many things about the world and its impact on the state of contemporary practice that the academy cannot change. But this — the way we train and support our students to enter and build a more humane profession — is one that it can.”
For a broader dive into degrowth, read Roddier’s article in Places Journal titled “Degrowth, Energy Sobriety, Low-Tech: Towards an Architecture of Conviviality.” The article includes an extensive reading list of other works on degrowth.
