www.buildingsandcities.org/about/sofie-pelsmakers.html
Dr Sofie Pelsmakers
Dr Sofie Pelsmakers is an environmental architect, educator, and researcher with expertise in energy demand reduction and holistic sustainable architecture and housing design. Based at Tampere University, Finland, she leads Sustainable Housing Design research - how buildings and spaces work in reality, how they influence users, and how they change over time.
She is particularly passionate about bridging the information gap between research and knowledge application in design and building practice. She is the author of the Environmental Design Pocketbook.
Latest Commentaries
Disaster Reconstruction: Rebuilding Trust in Fragile States
Tania N. Haddad and Tracy Sakr explain why effective disaster response in fragile institutional environments depends not only on resources but also on governance capacity, coordination mechanisms and institutional trust. The 2020 Beirut Port explosion shows that fragmented governance authority, non-binding coordination arrangements and low public trust resulted in duplicated efforts, uneven aid distribution and limited strategic recovery planning. Institutional reforms can strengthen state capacity, formalise coordination mechanisms between government and civil society, and rebuild trust through transparency and accountability.
Reimagining Climate Action, Community Engagement and Professional Responsibility
Climate change poses a plethora of challenges for decision- and policy-making on multiple scales. Adopting a risk perspective can identify multiple kinds of risk that must be addressed if climate action is to be successful. John Robinson and Emily Smit (University of Toronto), Pamela Robinson (Toronto Metropolitan University) and Anne Gloger (Catalysts’ Circle) consider the decision-making risks having to do with whether climate mitigation and adaptation policies and programs are likely to achieve their goals.