Documenting the journey of inquiry, discovery and learning.
Research
Where Buildings Become Stories
The built environment destroyed 30% of Earth’s biodiversity. Every year it emits 42% (15.3 Gigatonne) of carbon dioxide, with the embodied carbon of four building materials - cement, steel, iron and aluminium accounting for 15%. The building and construction industry is responsible for 21% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with buildings responsible for 34% of global energy demand. It also consumes almost 40% of the world’s raw materials and produces more than 40% of global waste streams, with around 35% (77 million tonnes) ending up in landfills.
As climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time, creating more single-purpose, resource-intensive, and carbon-rich buildings will further raise global temperatures and delay progress towards climate solutions. Sustainable and resilient buildings that are adaptable, multifunctional, regenerative and well integrated into social and environmental systems can meaningfully contribute to a healthier planet.
In my research, I use the globally visible, emotionally significant and architecturally iconic buildings - stadiums - as models for futuristic sustainable built environments. As landmark buildings and focal points of collective memory-making, stadiums can showcase experimental and meaningful opportunities to empower the entire built environment industry and communities to navigate an increasingly uncertain future.
Sustainability
Ideas for Hope and Resilience
Humanity thrives on polarity, just like nature. The greater the problems we create, the stronger the solutions we build. The larger our destruction, the more powerful our desire to renew. The bigger our stupidity, the wiser our brilliance. The deeper our ignorance, the stronger our care. We stumble in extremes, yet it is there that our genius begins. From ruin rises our restless longing to restore!
Here, I share some of the many astonishing sustainability strategies and initiatives people across the world are adopting to give nature a chance to survive, so it can continue giving us one. This includes big ideas and breakthrough technologies to little adventures and everyday acts of care. Each reminds us that even the smallest effort matters, and each of us matters.
And remind us that not all is lost. Not yet!
Reflections
Thoughts for Searching and Becoming
The world has changed, and with it the meaning and purpose we once gave to life. Today, we are all running - faster and louder, hoping the noise will quiet what we don’t want to face.
But if success means something different to each of us, have we paused long enough to see what it truly means for us?
Here, I share a few personal reflections drawn from my everyday experiences and the inevitable transitions of life. Often, they arrive as whispers from a heart we had forgotten we had, but emerging only after an overwhelming spiral of thoughts. Yet, it is in those moments that life teaches me what is mine to learn.
This page is for nurturing the silent spaces that make our actions more meaningful and more powerful.
Something or someone that stood out, surprised me, inspired me, or asked something of me.
Publications
Published articles and ongoing studies on sustainable buildings.