ATUT Symposium 2025 - Radical Care for Resilience in the Built Environment

Theme 01 explores the critical role of education in fostering radical care for resilience within the built environment, aiming to highlight the intersections of pedagogical approaches, innovations, and community-centered practices that contribute to resilient, inclusive, and sustainable spaces. In an era of increasing environmental challenges (e.g., biodiversity loss, scarcity of resources, etc.), social inequalities, and fast-moving urbanisation, ATUT 2025 seeks to investigate how educational frameworks can ingrain a deeper sense of care for people, places, and the planet.

• Educational Approaches: How can innovative methods and curricula in architecture, architecture engineering and related design and built environment fields promote resilience through the lens of radical care?
• Sustainable Design and Construction: How can educational institutions prepare students to design resilient, sustainable, and equitable, caring environments for human and non-human actors?
• Community Engagement and Social Equity: The role of education in fostering community-centered approaches for built environment resilience and adaptive design.
• Interdisciplinary Learning: How can collaboration between different fields, such as architecture, engineering and social sciences, drive radical care for resilience in the built environment?
• Policy and Practice: Exploring the impact of education on policy development and the integration of resilience and care and maintenance in building codes, city planning, and infrastructure development.

Abstracts should clearly demonstrate how education can play a transformative role in advancing radical care for resilience within various contexts of the built environment.

Theme 02 explores energy transition in the built environment, approached through the lens of radical care for resilience in the built environment, while also addressing potential unintended consequences. The global shift toward renewable energy, decarbonisation, and energy-efficient technologies offers immense potential to strengthen resilience in the built environment. However, as we transition to cleaner energy systems, it is essential to prioritise radical care, ensuring that the shift is not only environmentally sound but also socially equitable and attentive to the well-being of all communities (human and non-human). Radical care emphasises a deep ethical responsibility towards people and ecosystems, advocating for just and compassionate solutions in addressing climate change and sustainable energy use and production.

At the same time, the energy transition presents risks and unintended consequences, such as economic disparities, disruptions to vulnerable communities, or environmental impacts from new technologies. ATUT 2025 seeks to critically engage with these complexities and consider how we can balance the need for sustainable energy systems with the imperative of radical care, ensuring resilience for the built environment, the people and non-humans who inhabit it.

We invite abstracts from educators, researchers, practitioners, and students who are exploring the intersection of, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Energy Transition and Built Environment Resilience: How can transitioning to renewable energy sources, energy communities, enhance the resilience of buildings and communities while incorporating the values of radical care?
• The negative side of Energy Transition: What are the potential negative impacts, e.g., social, economic, environmental, intercultural, ingrained gendered aspects, etc., associated with the energy transition, and how can they be mitigated in architecture?
• Equity and Justice in Energy Transition: How can we ensure that energy transitions are inclusive; not reinforcing gendered power structures and addressing the needs of marginalised communities and reducing energy poverty?
• Sustainable Design and Energy Efficiency: How can architects and engineers design resilient and energy-efficient buildings that prioritise well-being and long-term sustainability and considers care and maintenance of systems and infrastructures?
• Energy and Social Infrastructure: How can energy transitions contribute to the social resilience of communities, enhancing not only infrastructure but also the emotional and social well-being of residents and can foster a sense of care?
• Technological Innovation and Ethical Implications: Examining the role of new energy technologies, such as smart grids and energy storage systems, and their potential unintended consequences, including environmental impacts, privacy concerns, engendered caring roles.
• Policy, Governance, and Community Engagement: What policies and governance structures are needed to ensure that energy transitions are resilient, equitable, and attentive to local community needs?

Theme 03 explores how digitalisation can foster or hinder radical care and resilience in the built environment, minimising the potential unintended consequences of these technological advances. As digital technologies increasingly shape the design, construction, and operation of our built environments, there is immense potential for promoting resilience through data-driven planning, smart cities, AI-enhanced systems, and real-time environmental monitoring. However, it is equally important to critically examine the unintended social, environmental, and ethical consequences of digitalisation. How do we ensure that the use of technology contributes to inclusive, sustainable, and human spaces that embody radical care? This concept of radical care emphasizes a commitment to equitable, compassionate, and sustainable development practices that prioritise the well-being of both people and the environment. ATUT 2025 seeks to explore both the opportunities and challenges that come with digital transformation in the built environment and include the following topics:

• Digital Innovation and Resilience: How can digital tools and smart technologies enhance the resilience of the built environment while integrating principles of radical care?
• (Un)sustainable Digital Innovation: What are the potential social, environmental, economic, ethical, etc. risks of digitalisation in architecture, engineering, and urban planning (e.g., social justice (digital break), environment impacts, privacy, engendered aspects)?
• Equity and Inclusion: How can digital technologies promote social equity, or conversely, exacerbate exclusion, gendered power structures, marginalisation in built environment design and development?
• Sustainability and Smart Technologies: Exploring the intersection of digitalisation and sustainability in building design, construction, and urban resilience and how it can support care.
• Digital Education and Training: The role of education in equipping architects, engineers, and planners with the skills to harness digital tools for resilience and care – linking to Theme 01
• Community and Human-Centered Design: How can digital technologies support participatory design processes and community-centered approaches towards built environment resilience? How can it support radical care principles without reinforcing caring roles?
• Data-Driven Policy and Governance: The role of digital technologies in shaping resilient policies and governance structures, and how to mitigate unintended consequences in their implementation.

Theme 04 explores the integration of radical care to enhancing ecological values, such as biodiversity, wellbeing, green transition, within architecture and promoting care and resilience in the built environment. ATUT 2025 will examine how ecological values can be prioritised and integrated in architecture, while critically reflecting on the potential unintended consequences of their implementation.

As architecture and urban planning increasingly embrace sustainability and ecological responsibility, radical care for nature and human wellbeing emerges as an essential guiding framework. Radical care emphasises a deep, ethical commitment to nurturing ecosystems and human communities in a way that is equitable, compassionate, and mindful of long-term resilience. However, the pursuit of these values must be carefully balanced with an awareness of unintended social, ecological, and economic impacts, ensuring that efforts to “green” the built environment do not inadvertently cause harm.

ATUT 2025 aims to foster dialogue on how architecture can incorporate biodiversity, promote wellbeing, and contribute to the green transition, while remaining vigilant to the risks associated with ecological interventions, such as the displacement of communities, gentrification, or over-reliance on technological fixes and lack of care of non-humans and the natural world. We invite interdisciplinary contributions from architects, urban planners, engineers, environmental scientists, social and political scientists. We welcome submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Biodiversity in Architectural Design: How can architecture and urban planning integrate biodiversity and natural ecosystems into the built environment to promote resilience, and what are the potential unintended consequences of these efforts; how do we care for and who does the caring for the natural world and non-human?
• Wellbeing and Ecological Design: Exploring the relationship between ecological values in architecture and human wellbeing, including mental health, social cohesion, and quality of life in green spaces, co-benefits of humans when caring for nature and non-humans.
• Green Transition and Resilience: How can architects and planners contribute to the green transition in a way that ensures both environmental and social resilience, while addressing unintended outcomes such as gentrification, engendered aspects in who cares for the environment, community, etc., or unequal access to green spaces?
• Unintended Consequences of Ecological Interventions: What are the potential risks of ecological strategies in architecture, such as reliance on green technologies or scarcity of natural resources, that could lead to negative consequences for communities or ecosystems?
• Nature-Based Solutions and Resilience: The role of nature-based solutions (e.g., green roofs, urban forests) in building resilience, and the challenges or trade-offs involved in implementing these strategies.
• Ethics of Ecological Design: How can architects and urban designers ethically balance ecological values with social justice, ensuring that marginalised communities benefit from green transitions without facing displacement or loss of cultural heritage?
• Biodiversity and Urban Spaces: Exploring innovative ways to promote biodiversity in dense urban environments and the potential conflicts with urban development pressures and who looks after the spaces and biodiversity.
• Policy and Regulation for Ecological Architecture: How can policymakers support the radical care of ecological values in architecture through regulations, incentives, and urban planning frameworks?