Urban Atmospheres of Health and Domestic Environmental Experience Design

Monday May 22, 2023

Fung Global Fellows Program
Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
 

Event is open to all, registration not required.

Venue: Room A71, Louis A. Simpson International Building, Princeton, NJ 08544

Programme

12:00 – 14:00

12:00 – 12:20 Lunch

12:20 Introduction: Tania Sharmin, Fung Global Fellow 2022-23, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University

12:30 Speaker 1: Dr. Juliet Patricia Davis, Professor and Head of School, Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, Wales U.K.

Talk Title: Urban Design and Atmospheres of Health

This talk is based on a part of a broader research project leading to the publication of the book ‘The Caring City: ethics of urban design’ in 2022. It will explore how urban designers engage with notions of and issues of urban atmosphere related to human health. Urban atmosphere is a complex notion combining the qualities of air at a given location and the subjective experience of the multifaceted, sensory qualities of place. An urban atmosphere is, as Peter Adey has argued (2013), ‘simultaneously meteorological and affective.’ Both air quality and the atmosphere of place in an affective sense have been connected in cross-disciplinary studies to a range of specific health conditions and issues straddling mental and physiological health. Beginning by setting out some of the key lines of debate and research, the talk will go on to show how the urban designers of two case studies have interpreted notions of healthy atmospheres that encompass both meteorological and affective understandings and also drawn on contextual issues in specific urban environments. It will reveal and discuss the arising urban design concepts and spatial strategies used to shape these atmospheres along with their intended benefits and affects. The discussion will include reflections on the agency of the designer, the relationship between imaginations and perceptions of space, and the potential temporality of the impacts of atmospheric urban design.

13:00 Speaker 2: Dr Masa Noguchi, Associate Professor in Environmental Design, Melbourne School of Design, The University of Melbourne, Australia

Talk Title: ZEMCH Environmental Experience Design Research Overview

Housing is a system of energy and environment. The needs and demands are dynamic having been changed in the course of time. The shifts in socio-demographics highlight the emergence of non-traditional households and influence housing configurations and performances. The COVID-19 outbreak has made us realize how important human experiences within confined spaces are to retain or enhance our physical and mental health and wellbeing. The environmental quality of physical indoor and outdoor spaces occupied by humans depends on personal judgments made through the spatial and contextual experiences that reflect their individual needs, desires, and expectations. Such spatial or environmental experiences inside and outside the bult environment influential in human activities and outcomes should be researched much further to sustain or improve the soundness of our society and economy under any circumstances of people’s lives. In the light of fuel poverty issues arising in various countries in which the drastic hike of energy cost is a serious concern, the notion of housing affordability has been extended to encompass both initial and operating costs. In view of economic sustainability at macro and micro levels, homes need to be affordable. Global warming accelerated with excessive carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission is becoming conspicuous. Generally, a house consumes a significant amount of energy before and after occupancy, and the associated CO₂ emission is contributing partially to the climate change. Towards securing environmental sustainability, housing needs to be net carbon neutral (or zero energy) in consideration of CO₂ emission derived from the overall energy use.

In response to such market needs and demands for social, economic, environmental, and human sustainability of built environments and beyond in developed and developing countries, the notion of zero energy mass custom home (ZEMCH) was envisaged and discussed globally. Towards the ZEMCH delivery, an emerging mass customisation concept was scrutinised initially. It emerged in the same year as the general notion of sustainable development was widespread in 1987. The oxymoron was recognised eventually as a means to lessen housing design and construction costs whilst achieving the customisability through economies of scope rather than economies of scale. Moreover, there is a global movement of human-centric environmental experience design (EXD) studies being carried out particularly in the context of built environments today. Thus, there are needs and opportunities to explore the ZEMCH EXD research attempts and outcomes for the sustainable urban design research and development of tomorrow. Accordingly, this lecture aims to introduce some ZEMCH and EXD research projects that were executed globally so as to initiate and stimulate discussion on how the emerging human centric ZEMCH EXD research can be applied to urban design contexts to secure or enhance social, economic, environmental and human dimensions of the sustainable development.

              
13:30 – 14:00 Q/A and Discussion

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Convener: Tania Sharmin is a Visiting research scholar and Fung Global Fellow at Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University. She is a Senior Lecturer (US: Associate Professor) in sustainable environmental design in architecture at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University. She completed her Ph.D. at University of Cambridge as a fellow of Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future award. Her doctorate investigated the impact of urban form and microclimate on outdoor thermal comfort and building energy performance for the tropical climate of Dhaka. Sharmin is conducting research in the interdisciplinary field of microclimate, comfort, and heat health for tackling urban warming and sustaining health in urban spaces of megacities using advanced remote sensing and machine learning techniques.

Speaker 1: Juliet Davis is Professor of Architecture and Urbanism and Head of School at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University. Her teaching and research span the fields of Architecture, Urban Design and City Planning History/theory. She is the author of two books and numerous publications in these areas. Juliet completed an AHRC-funded PhD at the London School of Economics’ Cities Programme in 2011 focussed on critically exploring the role of urban design in shaping the trajectories of long-term regeneration in East London connected to the 2012 Olympic Games. She practiced architecture and urban design in London for ten years in London before entering academia in 2007, contributing to Eric Parry Architects’ regeneration of St. Martin in the Fields amongst other projects. She studied Architecture at Cambridge University, graduating with a First-class degree in the BA in Architecture in 1995, the Edward S. Prior Prize for design excellence, and with a Commendation for the Diploma in Architecture (Part II) in 1999.

Speaker 2: Dr Masa Noguchi is a Chartered Engineer, Environmentalist, and Technological Product Designer registered respectively with the Engineering Council, Society for the Environment, and the Institution of Engineering Designers in the UK. In 2002, he also became a member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and today, he serves as a Certified Passive House Designer registered with the Passive House Institute in Germany. Dr Noguchi is the founding coordinator of ZEMCH Network (www.zemch.org) which consists of over 900 partners from over 40 countries and developed a series of industry-academia knowledge transfer events. ZEMCH international conferences (from 2012), ZEMCH sustainable design workshops (from 2014) and ZEMCH technical missions (from 2006) are amongst the projects being organized by ZEMCH Network today in partnership with the regional expert centers based currently in Australia, Brazil, Italy, Korea, UAE and UK. At the Melbourne School of Design, he spearheads ZEMCH (Zero Energy Mass Custom Home) related courses. Before coming to Melbourne, he was a Reader at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, The Glasgow School of Art, where he established a ZEMCH pathway within the Master of Architectural Studies program. Dr Noguchi leads ZEMCH engineering design research for the delivery of socially, economically, environmentally and humanly sustainable built environments in global contexts. Inventing a "mass custom design" system approach to quality affordable housing, he developed a digitalized interactive mass custom design communication tool, which was demonstrated in the US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon's Canadian house 2005. In 2006, he designed Canada's first (near) net zero energy modular home "EcoTerra house" - built and commercialized through the federal government's EQuilibrium sustainable housing initiative/competition in 2007. Moreover, Dr Noguchi turned his "mass custom design" system into reality through the Donside Urban Village development in Aberdeen, Scotland, and he also contributed to a low-cost prefabricated mass housing projects in Brazil. Serving as the editorial board member of numerous journals, Dr Noguchi is frequently invited to deliver keynote lectures on ZEMCH R&D projects at national and international conferences stressing the need for EXD methodological research and practice in built environments for the energy efficiency and affordability as well as the occupants' physical and mental health and wellbeing.