From Zero to Sustainability: Developing an Academic Culture in Sustainable Architecture

Abstract

The paper focuses a five-year process of injecting issues of sustainability into an established academic curriculum at the of Nicosia. The process engaged architecture students platforms of both a social and an environmental sustainability and aimed at imparting technical skills, heightening ecological awareness and dissipating misconceptions regarding environmental sustainability as the sole factor impacting energy management and quality of life. The process was constant flux, susceptible to local socio-economic conditions and as such, the paper traces the process’ development of the initial placement and its subsequent adaptations and improvements. The paper examines and exhibits challenges, successes and lessons leant and will provide a guide and a roadmap to other, similar academic endeavours.