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Dr Sonja Dragojlovic-Oliveira

JONATHAN MOSLEY

Dr Torsten Schröder

Dr Sonja Dragojlovic-Oliveira is an architect and sustainable design innovation strategist. She is also an Associate Professor of Design Innovation and Sustainability at UWE, an honorary lecturer at UCL and a visiting lecturer at a number of architecture schools across Europe. She is internationally recognized for her work on socio spatial energy behaviour and smart housing and design innovation, where her recent contributions include identification of socio-spatial impacts on energy behaviour in domestic environments, need for multi-layered design and social innovation in housing and energy modelling integration in architecture.

Associate Prof. Oliveira has over 20 years innovation experience in the sustainability and design sector as a senior manager and principal consultant having led delivery of complex multidisciplinary projects ranging in value from £200k-£29mil in the UK and internationally. She also recently edited the Energy Modelling in Architecture, A practice Guide (RIBA, 2020), initiated the Radical Architecture Practice for Sustainability working group via ARENA (http://www.arena-architecture.eu) and developed research challenge response for SHAPE Energy (https://shapeenergy.eu).

She is a board member of the World Green Building Council (Serbia), a scientific and industry advisory member of numerous scientific committees and is currently researching a new residential energy code for India [EPSRC RESIDE] and lead investigator on the smart energy evaluation work on the REPLICATE project (https://replicate-project.eu). Her research and innovation practice focuses primarily on experimenting and exploring the socio-spatial effects on peoples’ use of energy through buildings and technologies using visual methods. She is a firm believer in an action led knowledge exchange approach to accelerating sustainable outcomes in the design environment.

Jonathan Moseley is an architect and Associate Professor of Architecture and Experimental Practice at Bristol UWE leading Design Research. In collaboration with artist Sophie Warren he pursues a research-based practice that experiments with radical occupations and interventions within found or newly designed space, towards enhancing our collective and affective relationship with architecture. The work is playful, discursive, frequently participatory and rogue. Projects have been commissioned by organisations internationally including Tate, Modena Museet, ResArc, Casco, Eastside Projects, Institut Français, The Showroom, Spike Island, Arnolfini, SantralIstanbul and received awards from Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arts Council, British Council and Rootstein Hopkins Foundation. http://warrenandmosley.com

Dr Torsten Schröder is an architect, researcher and design strategist. Currently he is Assistant Professor of Sustainability in Architectural Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His key research interests are sustainability and circular economy within architecture and cities. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) he focuses on how the concepts of sustainability and circularity can be translated into building design practices in more innovative, meaningful, and effective ways. Torsten co-founded and co-directs the ArchiLab a university based architectural and urban think tank dedicated to exploring, creating and developing concepts and scenarios for sustainable futures. He obtained his PhD in the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science, winning the prestigious RIBA PhD research award in 2015. Torsten has participated in and led diverse research projects on national and European scale. He offers a unique blend of practical and research expertise. He has more than 10 years of experience in designing and realizing a wide range of outstanding architectural projects for leading design practices, amongst others for Rem Koolhaas / Office for Metropolitan Architecture as architect and project leader on projects in the USA, Germany, South Korea and China.

RAPS aims to share thinking, research and practice in multiple forms and via many channels of action.

2022

RAPS will be hosting an event named ‘PRACTISING RADICALITY FOR A SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE: Ways of Seeing, Ways of Being, Ways of Dreaming’ online on 10th June 2022 as part of the   Festival of the New European Bauhaus (NEB). The event aims to explore, provoke and champion new ideas, propositions and framing for how we SEE, LIVE together, IMAGINE alternative futures for Radical Architecture for Sustainability. The event will take shape in the format of an inclusive, innovative and impactful Roundtable Discussion with Prof Ana Betancour, Prof Sonja Oliveira, Assoc.Prof Jonathan Mosley and Assistant Prof. Torsten Schröder (partners of Radical Architecture Practice for Sustainability RAPS Network). Drawing on multidisciplinary insights, the round table will stretch the possibilities of how we represent, create and dream an architecture that embodies and inhabits complexity and entanglement in all its guises. In the first part of the event, Sonja Oliveira will be discussing ways that we SEE, communicate and represent challenges we face in sustainability practice in architecture proposing a new Visual Lexicon for Communicating these challenges in multimodal and multidimensional ways. Tortsen Schroeder and Jonathan Mosley  will then consider approaches to LIVING drawing on examples of how we relate to buildings we inhabit, how we relate to each other in design and construction processes and the translation needs this involves. Finally Ana Betancour will discuss how we IMAGINE alternative futures for a resilient regenerative environment and habitats.

2021


RAPS was busy in 2021 at an international scale with invited contribution to Venice Biennale (July 2021 – see EVENTS); RIBA Built Environment Summit (Sept 2021) and the UK Parliamentary Environmental Audit enquiry (May 2021) as well as the ongoing participation in the newly established New European Bauhaus Collective. This involves working with several pan-European organisations representing architects, spatial planners, engineers,and more broadly the cultural and creative sectors in Europe. Below are examples of acts that took place in 2021.

Oliveira, S., Marco, E., Betancour, A., Schröder, T., & Mosley, J. (2021). Sustainability of the Built Environment [Written Evidence-SBE0060].The following evidence gathered is of particular relevance to strategic pathway planning towards a decarbonised society where focus is placed on the design of environments rather than the design of buildings only. Building buildings is only one tool within a toolkit capable of improving and enhancing environments. The call for evidence suggests a narrow focus driven by potentially one-dimensional sustainable outcomes such as need for adaptation measures to building with little or no consideration for alternatives to building. Greater focus is needed on evidence that supports alternatives to building; new methods and new measures that account for social and cultural dimensions in evaluating sustainability in the built environment, and the embracing of multiplicity and diversity that allows for reskilling and knowledge-sharing in a meaningful way.https://www.architecture.com/knowledge-and-resources/resources-landing-page/built-for-the-environment-reportAct - Sonja acted as an advisor to the development of the report, produced in partnership with Architects Declare, bringing together a cross-section of research and publications submitted by the built environment sector. Using this evidence and ahead of COP26, the report urges governments to take urgent action, set more ambitious targets and building codes, and embed sustainability within planning systems.