Special Issues

Living Labs: Agents for Change

What are the roles and impacts that Living Labs play in increasing civic resilience and supporting ecological transition in different contexts and at different scales?

Net-Zero Retrofit of the Building Stock

How might the building stock transition towards net zero? How big a change is achievable? What factors determine both the overall potential as well as the transition process?

Trusting Building Performance Simulation

As codes and regulations become stricter, is simulation the right tool for compliance as well as sketching performance to assist design?

Energy Sufficiency in Buildings and Cities

How can conditions be created for decent living standards for all without exceeding planetary limits?

Health Inequalities and Indoor Environments

How do indoor environments affect health inequalities, inequities and injustice?

Urban Adaptation: Disrupting Imaginaries & Practices

How can we create a more pluralistic, inclusive approach to urban climate adaptation? How can ill-suited approaches be disrupted?

Social Value of the Built Environment

How is social value created, defined and measured in both placemaking (urban design, architecture and real estate) and construction (procurement and labour) processes?

Understanding Demolition

This special issue examines why demolition occurs, its consequences and how a more sustainable approach can be created.

Data Politics in the Built Environment

This special issue advances understandings of the practices, politics and power implications of data-driven buildings and cities

Urban Expansion

This special issue examines how cities in the Global South can predict & manage their expansion in effective, sustainable ways.

Transformational Climate Actions by Cities

This special issue advances understandings of the nature, extent and effectiveness of cities' implementation efforts to realise low-carbon, climate resilient cities.

Energy, Emerging Technologies and Gender in Homes

Gender 'blindness' impacts negatively on engagement with smart home technologies. If the energy transition is to be realised, then gender must be addressed.

Modern Methods of Construction: Beyond Productivity Improvement

This special issue investigates the broader implications and consequences of MMC over the life of the building - for both civil society and the construction industry.

Housing Adaptability

This special issue advances the understanding and implementation of housing adaptability and flexibility across a range of issues: spatial, social, environmental, economic, time and multi-use and multiuser adaptability.

Alternatives to Air Conditioning

In an increasingly hotter world, what policies, designs, technologies & behaviours can provide thermal adequacy for coolth?

Urban Systems for Sustainability and Health

Urban areas are highly complex systems. Solutions to urban problems are often co-dependent and inter-connected. How can a systems approach to cities improve sustainability and health outcomes?

Retrofitting at Scale: Accelerating Capabilities for Domestic Building Stocks

What are the capabilities and capacities for delivering retrofit at scale?

Urban Densification

How can urban densification be defined, monitored and controlled to create positive outcomes and avoid unintended consequences / negative impacts?

Education and Training: Mainstreaming Zero Carbon

How can education and training develop the capacities, capabilities and competences to rapidly decarbonise both new construction and the existing building stock?

Carbon Metrics: Assessing & Controlling GHG Emissions Across Scales

What constitutes appropriate and scalable carbon metrics in the built environment? How can a basket of different metrics inform policy and practice?