Sustainable-Sustainable Architecture Postgraduation (SSA): Theory & Practice
SSA is an English-taught postgraduate programme structured into online courses and practical workshops. The programme focuses on architecture practices that consider the layered dimensions of sustainability. It bridges topics of sustainable construction, natural building, just urban development, participatory design and social project management.
Regional
Portugal
Municipalities of Porto, Esposende, and Matosinhos.
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
ESTRUTURA DE MISSÃO PORTUGAL INOVAÇÃO SOCIAL 17-09-2019 C1-01-2020 31-12-2022
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Critical Concrete Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Thomas Edward Last name of representative: Parker Gender: Male Nationality: United Kingdom If relevant, please select your other nationality: Ireland Function: Education program coordinator Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: R. Direita de Francos 1024 Town: Porto Postal code: 4250-192 Country: Portugal Direct Tel:+351 916 593 582 E-mail:mail@criticalconcrete.com Website:https://criticalconcrete.com/
Sustainable-Sustainable Architecture is an English-taught postgraduate programme structured into online courses and practical workshops. The program focuses on architecture practices that consider the layered dimensions of sustainability. It bridges topics of sustainable construction, natural building, just urban development, participatory design and social project management. The programme is delivered by Critical Concrete in collaboration with ESAP – Escola Superior Artistica do Porto, and assisted by guest lecturers and mentors at the forefront of their respective fields.
During the practical workshops, our students co-design and build real social projects in Portugal, as the course is embedded in a project aimed at refurbishing houses of low-income families and public spaces for local communities.
In the first two editions, 33 students have successfully graduated from the program. The third cohort, consisting of 27 motivated students, was launched in 2022 and it attracted a record number of applications. In past editions, students have refurbished several houses for low-income families, rejuvenated public spaces and experimented with green energy solutions such as a solar water heater facade.
The programme combines 90 hours of theoretical online lectures online with 210 hours of hands-on experience and requires additional independent study.
sustainable architecture
natural building
postgraduation program
participatory design
social project management
1) Establish a conceptual base for an ecological and social approach to architecture. Teach how to create sustainable and livable cities, by creating livable neighbourhoods through social and affordable housing and climate neutral city planning. Promote the importance of circular economy strategies, local construction methods, and energy efficiency.
- A holistic curriculum of 15 modules has been crafted together with 23 field experts. This curriculum delivers precious know-how of experienced practitioners, many of whom have not previously been engaged in educational activities.
2) Spread and share the knowledge of sustainable, natural and low-tech building methods alongside the possible applications of vernacular construction today.
- Our research is publicly available on our website. Since the beginning of SSA, the research page has attracted more than 200,000 unique visits.
3) Learn how to run a sustainable project, how to fund it and how to be a responsible professional from the design to the building process.
- More than 3 successful spin-off initiatives have been developed by our program alumni and are now multiplying the sustainability impact in various locations across the world.
4) Apply a bottom-up approach through participatory design and communication to empower communities through design.
- 6 different communities in Portugal have been engaged in designing a sustainable space that is relevant to their needs. 3 municipalities have benefited from improved housing/public spaces and have learned to engage with a community successfully.
5) Engage the local population and institutions in order to increase the consciousness and opportunities for people in risk of social exclusion.
- More than 80 locals have been immersed in self-building and green skills training. These learning opportunities have contributed to their capacity of active citizenship and engagement, sustainable craftsmanship skills and regenerative planting knowledge.
Experience of the students:
1) Multidisciplinary architecture toolkit. We ensure the use of natural materials like earth, wood and stone and implement pioneering sustainable technologies such as cork insulation or natural wood protection. We aim to minimise the CO2 emissions from our projects by rejecting unnecessary concrete or steel structures. Participants get practical experience with this low-tech, sustainable form of construction that they can then apply on projects of their own. This extends to teaching about sustainable infrastructure, food systems, material reuse and deconstruction.
2) Becoming green change agents. We understand the forces moving architecture today and how those aspects are often to the detriment of students. SSA instead focuses on showing to each student how much each one of them can do a professional: it is a program full of experiments, each one aiming to look at architecture through a sustainability lense.
Experience of the local communities:
1) Right to aesthetics and comfort in social housing. Contrary to the prevailing practice in Portugal of using the cheapest solutions for social housing, we show that beautiful natural materials and vernacular design can also be accessible and affordable.
3 families-in-need enjoy improved living conditions (new roof, insulated house, renovated interior)
2) Sustainable and socially relevant public spaces. Public space interventions are all too often temporary; involving lots of materials that last for a season before being trashed. We are challenging this by proposing structures in public spaces that are strong, durable, sustainable, and transformative, and landscape design that increases the biodiversity and CO2 absorption in the space.
3 different public spaces have been rejuvenated and local residents now enjoy perks such as space for social market, picnics and informal gatherings, playful structures for children and community plants for food and medicinal purpos
1) Design the practical workshops that are accessible for people with different physical capabilities.
In all previous workshops we have practised an equitable task allocation - students work in groups and they can rotate and choose between the tasks that match their physical abilities.
2) Make sustainability education accessible and affordable.
SSA is a non-profit program. The €2,708 tuition fee in 2022 made it significantly more affordable than similar programs offering practical skills. Moreover, the theoretical modules can be individually purchased from our e-learning platform Criti.co for as little as €45. Our pricing model intends to keep the course as accessible as possible, while still offering a fair compensation to the course instructors and editors.
3) Scholarship based on inclusive criteria
We offer one scholarship per academic year provided by a private sponsor. The scholarship is awarded based on three criteria that consider a person's academic merit & motivation; provides opportunity for a Portuguese local student; or provides an opportunity for someone in whose location similar education is not available.
4) Gender and cultural diversity across students.
Our program breaks a stereotype that considers construction as mostly a masculine occupation. 75% of our students are women, and they report that this course has made them feel more empowered in their careers. By disseminating the results across our communication channels, we continuously communicate diversity and equity in the construction industry.
5) Offer educational modules focused on Social movements in architecture and taking Urban activism into public policy
Traditional university curriculums still lack the ability to make students the agents of change. Our program pays particular attention to including courses focused on larger societal issues and their connection to architecture, instructed by real-life professionals at the forefront of fighting social injustice.
The expected benefit is twofold. For the families whose houses are renovated they experience a drastic improvement in the quality of their home. The spaces are generously proportioned, thermally insulated, well ventilated with natural light and good quality furniture. So far this program has resulted in providing a huge improvement of standard of living for 3 families in-need. In case of public space interventions, the extended local community consisting of different generations and social classes are brought together to think about their shared space. They interact with us and with our students, providing us with their feedback about what problems should be solved and how they envision a functional public space. The municipality of Esposende, with which we have finished 2 public space projects, has stated that this participatory process helped them connect with their community and regain their trust for public interventions.
For the students, they develop specialist knowledge in sustainable construction through working hands-on on real building projects. They learn a diverse set of practical skills, such as processing wood sustainably, constructing with waste or up-cycled materials, on-site carpentry skills using both power tools and hand tools. Co-design with the community and local administration exposes them to managing different stakeholder needs and expectations, while meeting the time and resource constraints. Finally, during six weeks of intense co-working, they are constantly challenged to change their personal habits by learning to reduce their personal waste, eating vegan food and following other sustainable practices.
Local communities in and around Porto (Ramalde and Esposende), ESAP university community, Critical Concrete team members and staff, students from a broad range of countries, professions and backgrounds.
The local collaboration between Critical Concrete and Escola Superior Artistica do Porto (ESAP) is an essential factor for such a program to exist. Namely, Critical Concrete is an experienced practitioner organisation with a wide network of field professionals, whereas ESAP brings in the academic quality of standard. Critical Concrete was responsible for designing the curriculum, attracting the course instructors and preparing course content. ESAP then accredited the postgraduate diploma that equals to 60 ECTS.
On a regional level, three municipalities were engaged and they supported our practical interventions financially and administratively, as well as gave us permission to work with their respective communities.
On a European level, we collaborate with other sustainable organisations to create our course content. Our instructors and mentors are architects, builders, university professors, regenerative planting experts from all across Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and other European countries.
On a truly global scale, our stakeholders are SSA students and Critical Concrete staff. On average, 75% of SSA students come from Europe, whereas the remaining 25% have joined from as far as Brazil, Japan, South Africa, Nepal, and other countries. Finally, a large proportion of Critical Concrete’s staff are international volunteers and interns, making up a team of diverse backgrounds and cultures. The truly international spirit of the program has helped us to multiply the impact on a global scale, since we have seen our alumni establishing their own sustainability start-ups in Belgium, Germany, Vietnam, etc.
The course instructors are practitioners at the forefront of their respective fields. They provide a bridge between academia and practise through their courses. They cover various knowledge fields with the aim to provide a full-cycle view of sustainable architecture from design to construction and its long-term impact on society and nature.
Sustainable Construction and Natural Building - Theoretical classes and practical workshops. Earth construction, straw bale, mycelium and passive design strategies. Practical workshops require collaboration between mentors, students, local communities, local authorities and practitioners in design and construction. On the one hand, the program participants learn to engage with the local communities, and on the other hand, local communities get exposure to sustainability issues and methods to address them.
Ecological and Social Cities - Activism to public policy and discussions of urban flows of food and water.
Vernacular Construction - historical and contemporary research on the changing nature of vernacular in their home regions.
Participatory Processes - Participatory design methods both in theory and applied
Ethical Leadership - starting a social project driven by defined values.
Student interaction with professionals from all these disciplines has resulted in a self-reported increase in the sense of agency and empowerment to act as change agents in their workplaces.
1) Thinking global, but acting local. Through interactive online courses students dive into sustainable theory and explore their very own context from new perspectives. The key innovation lies in the fact that this program can be customised to a variety of contexts. For example, practical assignments in the earth course require students to collect and analyse an earth sample from their local surroundings. They then have the opportunity to exchange and discuss the different challenges and revelations they discovered from different soils across Europe.
During the practical workshops, students aim to address social and environmental challenges within a very well-defined urban context. Learning about global environmental problems often can make the learners feel doomed and helpless when facing an utterly complex problem such as climate change. However, our program lets them learn how to still make a positive impact, but within the given resource and impact constraints. Contextual approach is crucial to empower the future leaders and let them tailor their actions to an industry and geographical location they will choose to work in.
2) Skills from the real world. Guided by mentors working at the forefront of urban development, natural building, community participation and social justice, students become global sustainability practitioners who embed this knowledge into their future careers. They are empowered to enable behavioral change in their own community by applying this theoretical work in real conditions. The students are advocates for change and become part of a network of alumni supporting each other in this endeavour.
1) Sustainability education in all fields. Green skills are still absent from the majority of professional curriculums. We have chosen to address the architecture domain, however, similar initiatives are urgently needed across other polluting industries such as electrical engineering, fashion, food production, tourism, etc. Similar methodology could be applied to developing academic programs in each of these industries. Our experience shows that this model of e-learning combined with practical workshops is a program that can be developed over a relatively short period and can attract audiences internationally. We believe that educational institutions are facing a lot of pressure to keep up with the digital progress and the environmentalism movement, thus our solution showcases a viable approach to a resilient hybrid learning.
2) Participatory design for sensible and functional construction. Public interventions are often detached from the community’s needs. Our mission is to help administrations engage with their communities in a meaningful way and implement solutions that are actually useful for them. All of our students are deeply immersed in the participatory design philosophy and get to see the benefits of it, as well as deal with its challenges. We believe that high quality education is one of the most effective multipliers of our impact, since our alumni can then replicate these practices in their professional lives.
3) Hybrid higher education. The demand for remote, high quality education has exploded following the covid-19 pandemic, yet, the need for practical, hands-on experience is more vital than ever. Our model proves that a balance between theory and practice is possible. This model has been applied to our context in Portugal, but is by no means limited to this locality. We hope to inspire educational institutions, formal and informal, established and emerging, to consider how a hybrid approach could enrich and empower their practices.
Each of the two program’s semesters start with online learning modules which then culminate with a practical in-person workshop in Portugal. During the online learning process students are prepared for a diverse range of architectural challenges - from different sustainable material and method usage to local community engagement and public policy. We make sure that our transdisciplinary approach covers all the fields of theory that students will later need during their practical work.
ONLINE LEARNING & THEORY
Online Courses are delivered through our platform, Criti.co and combine theoretical input, interactive communication tools and hands-on assignments – where applicable. Each course will cover a specific topic, their duration varies between 4 to 8 weeks and the workload requires about 2-4 hours commitment per week.
CONSTRUCTION WORKSHOPS
The practical workshops are the heart of the postgraduation programme. It includes a workshop every semester, each with a 3 week duration. This gives the students an opportunity to translate the input from the online-courses into real hands-on and social practice. Within the framework of Critical Concrete’s upcoming projects, the students participate in the co-design process with the inhabitants. The process is moderated by our team.
During the practical workshops the students learn-by-doing, as well as attend short in-person lectures, reflection-sessions, participatory-design sessions, guided excursions, group works and discussion.
During all of our practical workshops, students work to address some local social and environmental challenges. The particular context of Northern Portugal is that of extreme heat in summer, excessive rain and humidity in winter, as well as a high unemployment rate with many families left at risk of poverty. Some of the globally relevant challenges that we have tackled in a local context include: humidity and lack of adequate insulation; “blank” public squares with no usable infrastructure for community gathering; lack of shade; greens and climate resilience in public spaces; biodiversity loss in urban areas; polluting materials. These issues add up to such universal problems as climate change, energy poverty and social segregation, however, they are too complex to be addressed by an individual professional. Our goal is to give our students the necessary tools to be able to apply the best practices in their local contexts.
In this program the students are key players and are invited to be proactive in proposing ideas and formulating experimental paths in which they are accompanied by tutors through their experience. Their task is to translate real solutions that will face the test of reality during the two in-person workshops. Two times a year, around February and June, all students come together in Porto to work on site, develop the experiments and implement the solutions they have planned: the project is developed and delivered at real scale.
This postgrad is a real “Laboratory for the future” in which mentors and students from different parts of the globe come together, each one contributing with an own locality, to experiment and learn about solutions with a double vocation: be based on local know-how, culture and materials and at the same time to propose solutions that could be applied in the widest and universal way by others around the world. We encourage an interesting and enriching tension transversely through the program.
SSA has been successfully running for almost three years now, with 33 program alumni and 27 current students. The interest and the number of applications have been growing every year, which is testament to the desirability of the programme given our limited budget for marketing. In order to deliver quality practical experience during workshops cohort numbers of under 30 are desirable. However, there are numerous opportunities for expansion. The hybrid nature of the programme means that we could expand to two cohorts, with slightly adjusted timetables, splitting the live components such as workshops. We have also drafted an initial proposal to expand the programme into a two-year masters, as a route to architectural qualification with a sustainability specialism. Additionally, through our collaboration with ESAP, we can accredit online modules with stand-alone ECTS credits. This opens the door to a dispersed model of higher education and promotes robust, recognised life-long learning. WIth the current student amount and traffic Critical Concrete can afford to hire two staff members who are working on the program full time.
The program has been growing consistently over the last three years:
- First year: 11 Students, All brand new online learning content and an e-learning platform, 1 house renovation.
- Second year: 22 Students, 3 new online modules responding to feedback, Roof renovation, public space renovation, furniture building
- Current year: 27 students, public space intervention, carpentry for social clients, branching into non-formal education practices during workshops.
By participating in the activities of the SSA, students go through a full cycle of impactful climate change activism. It starts with uncovering the multifaceted nature of climate justice, and realising larger-scale political problems. Then, they are introduced to sustainability-by-design methods and natural building materials. Finally, the scope of the project allows the learners to acquire a variety of hands-on practices and engage with the local communities, therefore overcoming the sense of helplessness and setting a path for them to become agents of change. The theoretical aspects of the curriculum cover the main “Embracing complexity in sustainability” priorities of the European competence framework of sustainability. The practical part, on the other hand, covers the “Acting for Sustainability” strand of this framework.
