Social and Environmental Impact Academy for Architects Erasmus Project

Project Title

Social and Environmental Impact Academy for Architects

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; Environment and climate change; Social entrepreneurship / social innovation

Project Summary

In the curricula of European architectural schools, issues of social and environmental responsibility in regional and international contexts play increasingly a central role. Universities prepare their students to assume leadership responsibility in various professional areas, but also in the social and environmental sense. Especially for architecture and planning, the environment lies at the focus of efforts to “strengthen the sense of responsibility towards society” through active “design and improvement,” especially in a decade facing global challenges such as climate change and social inequality.

SEIAA aims to support, awareness-raising about social and environmental and climate-change challenges in the field of architecture and planning and fosters dialogue among four different architecture faculties across Europe and cross-sector stakeholders about these topics. In the wider sense the SEIAA initiative supports the key Agenda 2030 of the Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations. Therefore, the SEIAA installs three workshops to provide students an inspiring teaching atmosphere to deal with these topics in a passionate and creative way. Beside architectural researchers & teachers (RTTs) also social and environmental experts are invited to contribute their know-how to the workshops. Furthermore, cooperations with NGOs and local communities are planned for more active participation in society and scaling the impact of the developed project by the architectural students.

One major core of the project is to conduct 4 Social and Environmental Impact Academy for Architects (SEIAA) workshops at 4 different architectural partner schools.

The aim of the SEIAA project is fourfold:
1. Conduct Impact oriented architectural workshops

The results of the workshop to the services and products created by an architectural intervention as well as the effects achieved by this intervention within target groups, their immediate environment or broader society. The differentiation which we are aiming for with the results of the SEIAA is beyond the level of architectural services and projects as outputs, or results at the level of the target groups as outcomes, on a long-term SEIAA is dealing with issues at the societal level, which are referred to as social and environmental impacts.

Target group: students
> 5 days intensive learning events for students from various architectural schools with groups of experts to develop their social/environmental impact architectural/spatial project
> 5 students from each university – up to 20 students or freshly graduates
> Through the participation in the SEIAA the students will gain know-how for social-and environmental impact oriented project developed in architecture and planning and also strengthen their abilities required for personal growth, new professional architectural orientation and self-fulfillment

2. Exchange for social & environmental impact oriented teaching
Target group: RTTs (Researchers, Teachers and Trainers)
> 5 days intensive teaching and learning events for RTTs from various architectural schools with groups of external experts to share insights of strategies how to deal with social and environmental challenges in teaching and how to create collective impact tackling these issues
> min. 1 RTT from each university – up to 8 RTTs and further external experts in the field of social innovation

3. Feedback-loops for curricula
Target group: architectural schools
Creation of Feedback-Loops: Through the input and competence building during the SEIAA workshops each partner university can critically reflect on their curricula, what are the key learning from the workshop and how could these inform the curricula further

4. Network with local communities and NGOs
Reach-out strategy for collective impact: Large-scale social and environmental change requires a broad cross-sector coordination and collaboration. Therefore an expert for collective impact is invited to build up this strategy with students and RTTs. (collective impact initiatives typically have five conditions that together produce true alignment and lead to powerful results: a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support organizations)

The SEIAA Strategic Partnerships Erasmus+ project aims to share innovative practices and promote cooperation, and exchanges of experiences for achieving social and environmental impact in the field of architecture and planning. Therefore, the project should be carried out in a transnational manner to scale up the reach-out and impact of this initiative. Large-scale social & environmental impact comes from better from exchange and cross-sector coordination rather than from the isolated intervention of individual organizations. The overall goal is to promote, discuss, develop architectural education approaches in alignment with the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 294221 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITAT LIECHTENSTEIN & Country: LI

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITEIT HASSELT
• DET KONGELIGE DANSKE KUNSTAKADEMIS SKOLER FOR ARKITEKTUR, DESIGN OG KONSERVERING.
• Bergen Arkitekthøgskole