CULTURE & SUSTAINABILITY

About the course
Culture is often overlooked in the discourse on sustainability, despite our built heritage often being threatened with erosion in the wake of modernization and globalisation. This course seeks to demonstrate how traditional cultures, spaces and technologies can contribute to the green agenda by ensuring the lessons of the past can provide reference points for our present built environment’s evolution. In particular, this course will demonstrate how the principles of sustainability can be applied in the conservation, restoration and adaptation of historic structures; and consider the conservation of heritage buildings into urban and regional planning as a means of enhancing ‘nostalgia’ tourism. It will explore ways in which tested building and conservation techniques still meet emerging standards for sustainability and energy conservation; and provide an insight into how indigenous building materials and passive design techniques help retain local cultural identity.