Presentation: Responses to a changing climate require systemic changes to our way of thinking about the built environment. Carol Marra from  Marra + Yeh Architects is going to share her insights into how architecture can adapt to climate extremes. If you are renovating or building a home, an architect, a designer or simply a layperson who wants to see better architecture, this talk will provide you with innovative approaches that draw on vernacular traditions.

Put simply, good architecture needs to be a climatic architecture; it either counteracts climate by basic measures and features or adapts itself to climatic changes on an ongoing basis. Climatic response needs to be one of the driving aspects of architecture, not an add-on or an afterthought. The talk details how design principles researched during the course of Carol’s Churchill Fellowship can be applied, in new and contemporary ways, to buildings and cities in the Australian context, illustrated with practical case studies.

Speaker: Carol graduated from The University of Texas and practiced in Seattle before relocating to Australia. Together with her husband they started an architectural practice in Sydney in 2005 and also established a presence in Malaysia. Carol regularly teaches sustainable design at Sydney University and serves as a design advisor to the Government Architect NSW. It is a goal of her work to create buildings and places which are both environmentally aware and environmentally appropriate. The work of her practice has been recognised through international publications and awards. In 2009 she received a Winston Churchill Fellowship that took her to Japan, China and the Philippines to examine vernacular traditions which can accommodate severe climate patterns.

(please log in to see content)