Abstract

Abstract: Open spaces can play an important role in cooling our cities. By providing networks of clean air and helping us to escape the heat of the built environment, they can be viewed as effective climate regulators. Focusing on the concept of adaptation, this talk tries to explain how it influences outdoor comfort, enabling us to inhabit and get satisfaction from outdoor spaces. Understanding people’s thermal experience in urban spaces can inform our vocabulary of independent physical interventions. Ultimately, such knowledge can enable us to use design constructively to improve environmental quality and increase our adaptive capacity under climate change.

Biography: Marialena Nikolopoulou is Professor of Sustainable Architecture at the University of Kent. Prior to that she was Director of the EDEn research unit at the University of Bath and Research Associate at the Centre for Renewable Energy Sources, where she led the EU-funded project “Rediscovering the Urban Realm and Open Spaces”. Her work on outdoor thermal comfort has received international recognition, including the Human Biometeorology Scientific Award by the International Society of Biometeorology, and stimulated field surveys in open spaces across the world.