Assistant Professor Terri Peters Awarded 2023 AVP International's Global Learning Award
Each year, the AVP International awards the Global Learning Award in recognition of exceptional contributions made towards global learning by a faculty or staff member. This year’s award was awarded to assistant professor Terri Peters of the Department of Architectural Science.
Dr. Terri Peters joined the department in 2018 and has since contributed greatly to the development and education of sustainable practices at DAS. From 2019 to 2021, Peters taught ASC 200: Sustainable Practices, underpinning the foundational framework for sustainable design and inquiry for first year students.
“It was really exciting to think, well, what is our sustainable practice? How can we teach this? I had an opportunity to take this course and introduce a lot of these ideas about sustainability, building performance, and building science, but also the social and architectural aspect of sustainability. I had a lot of questions and comments from students about climate change. I started to think about how I would better gather the information from students about their level of knowledge. [Such as] what are they learning, what their interests are, etc., and I wanted to know more if this was a direction I should take the course. Should there be more on this? What resources do they already have, or what are they already learning about this?”
With these questions in mind, Peters was inspired to create a research project which navigated approaches to closing knowledge gaps in the curriculum’s teaching of sustainability, and of climate change. Furthermore, the project sought to provide a platform for students and educators to voice their concerns.
Supported by the 2021/2022 Toronto Metropolitan University Internationalization at Home Fund, Peters created a web-based survey asking Canadian architecture students and instructors to reflect on the current curriculum’s inclusion of climate-related issues. The ClimateCurriculum.ca (external link, opens in new window) launched in early 2022, and the project was led by Dr. Terri Peters with undergraduate students Jana Stojanovska and Jayda Brown (BArchSc (Hons) ‘22) acting as research assistants.
The survey was primarily influenced and adapted from Arch4Change (external link) , a project which sought to create a contemporary climate-based curriculum for European architecture institutions through dissecting skills gaps, and by providing a toolkit for educators. Similarly, the ClimateCurriculum.ca project asked questions about the climate crisis: what did students and educators know, what they did not know, and what they thought should be included in the emerging conversations. The ClimateCurriculum.ca’s survey was live from February to May of 2022, and collected a total of 195 responses from all of the 12 accredited architecture schools in Canada.
"I’m very much inspired by the work that’s going on in Europe that’s looking at how students learn about climate change and what their interest level is in climate change. [...] It was really exciting for me to connect this to European study and with European collaborators.
There’s currently no relevant Canadian data like this, so it was really exciting that we could collect and share this Canadian data that corresponded to this important European data, and try to move things forward in terms of education, awareness, and advocacy."
Peters notes that 84% of the survey was completed by students, with the remaining 16% by educators.
The survey also included a poster design competition that asked students to “share [their] vision, demand or concern about sustainable design and climate change in architectural education.”
“In its structure, the study intentionally connected outwards to the poster competition. [...] Ideally, the survey was to compare it to European findings and attitudes to climate change. But the poster competition was really an idea of “how do you visualize it?”
Sometimes, we think climate change is a word. But what is the architecture like? How would we really think about that? It’s so abstract. It’s like sustainable design, [... which] is one of those words that no one is going to disagree with, but it’s hard sometimes to really tangibly touch. I wanted to make something where students could be creative with graphically, and put their ideas into some kind of graphic.”
The competition proved to be incredibly successful, with 74 submissions from students in 20 countries addressing concerns such as carbon neutrality, the anthropocene, sustainable design, and the lack of climate-based teaching in the architectural and theoretical curriculum.
To better understand the future of a climate-based education, we spoke to Dr. Terri Peters about the results of the survey, the potential of a climate curriculum, and the importance of closing knowledge gaps early in one’s design education.
Was there anything that stood out for you when you read the results of the survey?
Everything was surprising. [...] I knew it would be different in different schools, even though we all follow the same criteria, just like how if you tested everybody on a different topic, you would get different answers.
The unsurprising result from this survey was that almost everybody thinks that we should embed sustainable design in our architectural education and curriculum. No one thought that this wasn’t important.
In your opinion, what do you think is the reason why so many students are now, or more recently, interested in climate change?
I have a lot of thoughts about that. I’m not exactly sure, but one thing I’ve noticed is that in the profession, there’s more discussion of it. And I wonder if students are looking forward and thinking to themselves: what can I learn in school that I can apply when I move into practice?
Another thing might be is that in high school, and in their earlier years, there’s more of a talk about it, and they might have came into architecture thinking that this was a direction they wanted, and I think that might be true, because I do have students who contact me to supervise different parts of their thesis, and what they’re looking at, and they’ve been interested in these issues for so many years.
I think it could also be that they’re looking into practice, and seeing these aspirational examples.
It could be that it’s more talked about in popular culture or debated about, so perhaps it’s like talking about food, waste, or fast fashion, and they’re coming from a different point of view. Plus, buildings are overwhelmingly this huge contributor, so I think it makes a lot of sense that they’re interested in climate change.
They’re also interested in the impact too. So another reason might be that they’re seeing it around them. They’ve experienced the heat wave or storms, and they’re having a direct experience.
As you mentioned, the survey was inspired by the work in Europe but also by teaching at DAS. Based on the preliminary results from the survey, where do you see the state of a climate curriculum? Say, in the next 5, 10, or even 15 years?
I think that design studios within schools are often the reason why students are there. In the short term, I think we’ll see more studios that focus on adaptive reuse and renovation. [...] Most of the time, it’s almost always a new building on the site. But that’s not really a reality as to what our students will encounter when they enter practice.
[...] I would say there are three things that I think we’ll see in the curriculum changing. One would be a focus on the reuse of buildings for studio projects, and another would be being able to measure impacts.
I think that the more students have these tools, the more they’re going to be able to use the feedback in their early stage design, rather than doing a whole project, and then measuring the impact. I think they’d rather measure it and understand it as they go, and perhaps think, “if I do this, it has this impact, so maybe I’ll look into this other option.” I truly believe that being able to understand measurable impacts of their design is important.
The third one I think, would be that students might start to think about what will happen to their building in the future. For example, in my second year studio we looked at libraries. Wouldn’t it be interesting if we talked about what that site and that building would look like in 25 years? How would it undergo a major renovation? What might it look like? Would it still be a library? Would changing needs be able to be accommodated in this building? What if you had to change it into housing?
A lot of things are impossible. It could be very difficult to transform a library, but what if it needed to have more or less of a community component? How would an addition work on the site? What would happen if there was a declining population in the area?
In summary, the three exciting things that I think could come with thinking about climate change and sustainability include thinking about reusing buildings, measuring impacts, and thinking about buildings in the future instead of just in the present.
The three areas aren’t exactly climate science, but instead, they’re thinking more holistically about sustainable design.
Do you think it’s important that students learn about sustainability and climate change at the beginning of their education?
I would love to see them have a foundational understanding of definitions, key terms, different impact levels, and have a big picture thinking right from the beginning of our program. Then, they can develop that knowledge alongside the program and apply it throughout their projects.
I hope that’s the direction we move in. The awareness needs to come first, because a lot of students don’t feel confident that their education is preparing them for future climate and future building–that came through loud and clear in the survey.
I think it’ll be interesting to see not just the Canadian curriculum, but the international curriculum implement sustainability–just so everyone’s on the same playing field.
Yes, I think that also means looking closely at the requirements to becoming a professional architect in Canada. I think there’s no way around that because if you just leave it up to each school, you’ll have more flexibility, but you could also miss out on some areas.
[...] We don’t want students graduating who have no idea about accessibility or or fires or planning. You can’t leave things out, but I want to make climate change and sustainable design one of those things you can’t leave out.
Dr. Terri Peters’ paper, which shares the findings of the survey, is expected to be published in the summer.
Image courtesy of Terri Peters. Photography by Troy Fullerton.