Outdoor comfort as a commodity: enhancing our adaptive capacity and thermal resilience in the urban environment

When: 12pm Friday 25 August

Where: Seminar Room 481, Level 4 Wilkinson Building

Online: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/89073629874

Speaker: Prof. Marialena Nikolopoulou

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for inclusive, high-quality, open space, as essential to support liveability and resilience. This seminar will focus on understanding how the abstract concept of thermal comfort, an inherent characteristic of space, is affecting use and activities in open urban spaces. It will explore the mechanisms through which our adaptive capacity is enhanced, from conscious actions to a range of parameters in the contextual framework of psychological adaptation, temporality and cultural norms, proceeding to discuss how these can be employed in design. Ultimately, it will highlight the need for adaptive capacity and thermal resilience at the individual level, as well as spatial scale, supporting environmental diversity. In a warming climate and in the wake of a global health pandemic, outdoor comfort becomes an important commodity, where the design of open spaces can play a critical role not only for climate regulation and energy, but also for health, livability and social cohesion.

Speaker bio

Marialena Nikolopoulou is a Professor of Sustainable Architecture at the Kent School of Architecture & Planning, University of Kent. She is an Architectural Engineer specialising in Environmental Design with extensive experience in monitoring microclimatic conditions and post-occupancy surveys in different operational contexts. Her work on outdoor comfort has received awards from diverse bodies (Royal Institute of British Architects, International Society of Biometeorology) and best paper prizes, and has influenced the understanding of the topic across the world. She has also been ranked among the top 2% of researchers worldwide, according to the 2020, 2021 and 2022 studies published by Stanford University. She is currently the UK lead for the European H2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Industrial Doctorate ‘Solutions for Outdoor Climate Adaptation’, is on the Steering Committee of the CIBSE Guide A on Environmental Design, and is Editor of the International Journal ‘Building and Environment’.