Addressing sustainability in architectural education from urban to building scale: Reflections on the environmental design studio

Abstract

Over the past decade, new approaches have emerged to renewable energy educationto address the needs for sustainable energy supply systems. In addition, unlike conventional architectural education, which does not cover renewable energy issues in its curriculum,these days, renewable energy education has an identity of its own within the discipline ofarchitecture. The fluid and multi-layered structure of the environment requires a broaderperspective with a more expanded, cross-boundary knowledge and skills. In addition, a setof academic obstacles impeding the development of sustainable architectural education isexplored such as ambiguous definitions and lack of experts in this field.This paper mainly concentrates on the structure of architectural studies and the significance of environmental design. The study presents a descriptive reading throughthe experiences in the environmental design studio in the Architecture Department-Epoka University, and in this sense evaluates the outcomes within the educational process. Theaim is to discuss the relationship between the interior/exterior or environment/buildingthrough the ideas created in the design studio. The key points are elucidated through examples of student work from architecture department. The reflections upon developing the knowledge of "environmental consciousness" and establishing the dialogue between different scales of environment on student work are examined and discussed in the scopeof this paper