Posted: November 29th, 2016

Discuss how designers can help keep global warming to below 1.5°, as well as how to design for adaptation to address predicted climate change, both now and in the future

Module 1 – Climate Change and the role of designers Question: Prepare a 2000 word essay with the title “Climate Change and the role of designers” The essay should identify the causes of climate change with a particular focus on the contribution from the built environment. Discuss how designers can help keep global warming to below 1.5°, as well as how to design for adaptation to address predicted climate change, both now and in the future. Guidance: As a guide the essay should be roughly split as follows: x The primary causes and consequences of Climate Change – 20% x The contribution from and impact on the built environment – 20% x The key drivers and policies to reduce CO2e emissions – 20% The role of designers to: x reduce the Greenhouse Gas emissions of buildings – 20% x adapt buildings to climate change – 20% “Designers” is used to describe any technical consultant working in Cundall. Please tailor the essay to primarily address what you can do in your professional capacity but also demonstrate a high level understanding of what other disciplines of Cundall should do. Please note that that reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of buildings will be dealt with in more detail in other modules so the essay does not need to go into a high level of detail on every aspect of this topic. Referencing x Please use the Harvard Referencing style. x When presenting the views and work of others, you must give an indication of the source of the material: ‘… as Sharpe (1993) has shown’, and give the full details of the work quoted in your bibliography x If you quote text verbatim, make this completely evident. Again conventions will vary but you might say: ‘The elk is of necessity less graceful than the gazelle’ (Thompson, 1942, p. 46) and give the full details in your bibliography as above x If you wish to set out the work of another at length so that you can produce a counter-argument, set the quoted text apart from your own text (e.g. by indenting a paragraph) and identify it in a suitable way (e.g. by using inverted commas and adding a reference as above) NB long quotations may infringe copyright, which exists for the life of the author plus 70 years if you are copying text, keep a note of the author and the reference as you go along, with the copied text, so that you will not mistakenly think the material to be your own work when you come back to it in a few weeks’ time x If you reproduce an illustration or include someone else’s data in a graph or table, include the reference to the original work in the legend, e.g. ‘(figure redrawn from Webb, 1976)’