This lecture gives a brief overview of the climate emergency and how we got here, how it relates to architecture and what a radical sustainable transition means. In 2022, the IPCC report stated that Architecture and planning is lagging behind all other sectors in climate action. Urgent action is needed before 2030 – the long lifespan of buildings / urban and land-use policies ‘lock in’ emissions and polluting development and behaviours for decades. Technology alone will not be enough: you need to go from exploitative values, mindsets and practices to new restorative values and be part of creating a new culture that rethinks what we do and the way we work. We have a collective responsibility to protect our planet and architecture - you are part of the solution, and no longer be part of the problem!

Here the ugliness of unsustainability is discussed and framed through the lens of a cognitive approach to beauty and how, in doing so, we cannot frame our architecture as beautiful when it is based on extractive and exploitative processes. After all, there is no life, no architecture, no ‘beauty’ in a 4C° world. Nothing less than a radical change of our values, culture and practices in architecture (and society) is required to avoid 4°C warming. It takes us outside our comfort zone because we need to change how we design spaces and places. But our architecture cannot be exploitative or permitted to transgress other’s rights (human and non-human). To do this, we as architects need new values and a new, restorative aesthetic that ‘de-centres’ ourselves as architects and centres the planet, other people, other communities and non-humans in our design process and decision-making.