![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/cde.nus.edu.sg\/nuscities\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2024\/11\/Michael-Salka-Lecture_Website-scaled.jpg\" "\\"Michael")
\n\t\n\tAdvanced Ecological Architectures & BioCities: Learning by Living – How to Build a Greener Future<\/b><\/p>\n
How can cities follow the principles of natural ecosystems to promote life? What kind of materials and buildings should constitute these future “BioCities”, and how can we make them a reality? These are vital challenges, given the built environment is currently responsible for 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, 40% of material use, 30% of energy consumption, and 20% of solid waste generation worldwide.<\/p>\n
This talk will review the work of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia’s (IAAC) Valldaura Labs, where students of the immersive Master in Advanced Ecological Buildings & BioCities (MAEBB) gain the capacity to answer these crucial questions through “learn by living” in an historic farmhouse estate renovated to feature both digital and manual carpentry workshops, which enable them to design and build cutting-edge prototype structures and co-created public spaces, from forest to fabrication, in collaboration with world-leading experts.<\/p>\n
Example projects include, to name but a few: a mobile engineered timber home and event space held together without any glue or metal; a chapel for a robot with a branching canopy roof; a 10-point manifesto on how urban systems can mimic ecosystems; an ephemeral cloud over a prison-turned-school assembled by children during a street party; and the European Union’s flagship platform for upskilling and reskilling the entire construction sector to achieve a carbon-neutral, sustainable, beautiful, and inclusive built environment inspired by the Bauhaus.<\/p>\n
Michael Salka<\/b><\/p>\n
Michael Salka is an architect, educator, and researcher. He serves as Co-director of the Master in Advanced Ecological Buildings & Biocities (MAEBB) and Technical Director of Valldaura Labs at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona (IAAC), and is a Gates Cambridge PhD Scholar. He has designed and built diverse projects including water infrastructures in rural Rwanda; net-zero neighbourhoods and mixed-use urban infill developments in the USA; and prototypical engineered timber buildings, public spaces, and future ‘Biocities’ in Spain. He has published\u00a0in peer-reviewed journals and books such as Springer Nature’s\u00a0Transforming Biocities, alongside reports on bio-based social housing for the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. His constructions have also been featured in popular media outlets such as The New York Times. Michael manages IAAC’s partnership in the New European Bauhaus Academy, currently being established as the European Commission’s flagship programme to train, upskill, and reskill the construction ecosystem towards carbon-neutrality, whilst integrating the core principles of beauty, sustainability, and inclusiveness.<\/i><\/p>\n
Date: 20<\/b>th November 2024, Wednesday<\/p>\n