Comfort, Cooling and Critical Accountability: a teaching tools and research odyssey

Abstract

How do we ensure the next generation in the building profession are best equipped to respond to the challenges of providing comfort in a rapidly heating world? As environmental science educators it is our job it is to pass this responsibility to the next generation. For those whose work will be in the global ‘south’ this task is especially crucial as we know that achieving thermal cooling is more energy consuming and harder to achieve than through heating. In today’s world with greater communications and IT usage might this become easier to achieve? The internationalisation of students in universities also means that the research and teaching of environmental design courses to students whose ultimate work and practice location will be sites in the “tropical south”, needs to be addressed. Today there is a great need to revisit the notion of a tropical design syllabus and associated design courses to be taught to Western universities’ international student cohorts. Here we review the history of tropical education across the world. It then considers the current status of environmental design teaching, taking into account the incorporation of new tools for environmental science pedagogy; environmental modelling, environmental apps, applications such as AI and VR. Finally, it suggests how future environmental design teaching might benefit from incorporating new pedagogy to deliver sustainability-focused environmental science teaching, to tomorrow’s practitioners and researchers.