Informed Forms: Introducing Climate Response into the Early Design Studio

The authors offer plug-in workshops as an immediate strategy to better integrate the topics of climate change, carbon and sustainable practices into early levels of design instruction, and to meet the need for a more rapid response to perhaps the greatest challenge of our time. The workshops can be introduced with a minimum of time and effort if productive working relationships and communication between technology and studio faculty are established. The authors offer these case studies and this approach to meet the urgent need to embed climate-responsive, low-carbon and low energy waste approaches into the foundational design processes of all beginning design students.

Keywords: Carbon Literacy, Early Design