Through the Eye of a Needle: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Climate Action

Join this multi-disciplinary panel of design professionals as they discuss design in the time of climate change. Find out how human ingenuity, cross-disciplinary inquiry and simultaneous advocacy coalesce to supercharge our creative powers and lead us to the most sustainable, thoughtful and equitable design solutions.

With buildings accounting for 39% of global CO2 emissions, and humans consuming resources at a rate that is 1.7 times faster than what the Earth can regenerate, the architectural disciplines have an outsized role to play because, as noted recently by panelist Lindsay Baker, “architects are trained to imagine and design the future”. The goal for this panel is to discuss how cross-disciplinary inquiry and simultaneous advocacy can maximize our effectiveness as architects and engineers in addressing those most pressing and time sensitive issues of our time.

Inspired by Richard Neutra’s “Survival Through Design,” this session will begin with each panelist providing an overview of their unique approach to addressing the impacts of climate change. The panelists are recognized nationally and beyond as leaders in the transformation of the practice of architecture. Following a short lunch break, the panelists will gather in roundtable fashion to discuss the climate topic and to share the many unique, multi-disciplinary and positive ways that design professionals can approach design in a changing climate. What each panelist has in common is that they are all specialists with decades of experience in their fields, who also have multi-disciplinary expertise and activist tendencies. By thinking about architecture differently, they have expanded their influence beyond the boundaries of architecture to more rapidly and effectively bring about change.