A Sustainable Blueprint: Rethinking Architecture and Environmental Justice with Lynnette Widder
Season 4: Episode 10
The guests in our commercial series, are experts focused on how our collective system is organized. We’re not talking about which produce to pick at the grocery store – although these lifestyle choices are critical. Our guests in this second series play pivotal roles in the organization of our society, disrupting the economy at the institutional level and changing how products are imagined and created.
In this episode, Eric talks with Lynnette Widder, an architect and professor at Columbia University, about changing the system through the built environment. They explore the impacts of energy efficiency, the power of community resilience, and define environmental justice. Lynnette emphasizes the importance of incremental changes and how reuse and refurbishment are two overlooked concepts in architecture.
After the interview, design researcher Jacqui Himmel joins Eric to unpack the episode providing the most important calls to action from the discussion that you can implement today!
About our guest
Lynnette Widder teaches sustainable, resilient, and equitable built environment practice at Columbia University. Her architectural work has been published in the New York Times, dwell, and Interior Design. Her current work focuses on low-embodied energy, and low-carbon renovation of Modernist buildings. She is the author of three books, two on mid-century architecture and construction and one on architectural pedagogy. Her journalistic writing has appeared in Daidalos, Bauwelt, Architecture, Manifest, Kritische Berichte, the Journal of Industrial Ecology, and the Social Science Journal. She has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, ETH Zurich, University of British Columbia, Cornell University, Cranbrook Academy of Art, and City College of New York.
Links mentioned in this episode
Wasteland: A History (book)
Integrative Capstone Workshop at Columbia
“How I Preserved A Historic House While Making It More Energy Efficient”
Loft in the Woods: Standfordville, NY
“Airtight Wright: Using INTELLO to Restore an Architectural Relic”
Lynnette Widder’s professional profile
“Fire, Ruins, Flora, Forgetting”
Music in this episode
Nature sound effect by bbc.co.uk – ©2023 BBC
Climify Theme Song by Casual Motive
The Season 4 Climify Team
Eric Benson (Host)
Cam Burkins (Producer)
Bhavna Bhavanishankar (Experience Researcher and Multisensory Educator)
Adam Dziaba (Designer)
Jacqui Himmel (Multimedia Journalist and Scriptwriter)
Abigail Zhuk (Design Researcher)
Climate Design Assignments
At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.
