The Place of Sustainability in Architectural Education: Discussion and Suggestions

Architecture is a unique discipline that facilitates spatial solutions for human needs and has a fundamental responsibility to ensure a sustainable built environment. Signified as a combination of technology and design, architecture is strongly related to diverse disciplines such as sociology, psychology and physics. Furthermore, the contextual political and economic conditions are influential on architectural practice. Within this multi-faceted nature, it is necessary to recognize architecture as a combination of creativity, scientific knowledge and technological innovation. Essentially a contested concept with a multitude of approaches and sustainability is considered vital for architecture discipline. Nonetheless it is either underestimated or dominates design approaches with technological superiority. Similarly, teaching sustainability in architectural education is by agreement defined essential; however, the majority of curricula are inefficient in integrating sustainability with a comprehensive approach. However, in order to envision a sustainable built environment, the architecture curriculum has to cover a basic understanding of the link between sustainability, technology and design. Therefore, built upon the arguments in literature, this theoretical paper discusses the means to underpin concepts of sustainability within a responsive architecture curriculum. In a constantly evolving architectural practice, the need for a mind-shift for educators, students and professionals regarding sustainability approaches is an essential constituent to provide holistic design approaches. In order to achieve such progress, revisions in the architecture curricula that establish a balanced comprehension between creativity and integration of sustainability approaches are of utmost importance.