Public lecture: Teaching Evidence-based Design: Successes, Challenges and Next Steps

 

As urbanization continues to increase globally, cities face significant design-related challenges that affect human health and well-being, such as climate change related coastal flooding, reduced human thermal comfort with hotter microclimates, and increasing rates of skin cancer with over-exposure to the sun. How do we design buildings, urban areas, and landscapes in support of human health and wellbeing? The design professions are well placed to play key roles in addressing these issues, but our potential may not be realized if we continue to base our designs on beliefs and expert opinion rather than facts or evidence. Evidence-based design (EBD), the deliberate and explicit use of scholarly evidence in support of design decision making, is a promising way forward. However, there is still a high level of uncertainty regarding how best to imbed evidence into the design process in ways that are easy for designers and cost effective. This presentation shares lessons learned from teaching evidence-based design in Landscape Architecture in New Zealand. It will evaluate the EBD design methodology, its successes, failures and next steps, and implications for design practice.

 

 

 

Assoc.Prof.Dr Wendy McWilliam is teaching at School of Landscape Architecture, Lincoln University in New Zealand. She specializes in urban and rural green infrastructure within the field of Applied Landscape Ecology. Her research identifies and evaluates alternative designs of green infrastructure systems, in addition to their supporting planning policies and management practices, in support of healthier and more resilient landscapes. She is the author of 28 publications, 18 of which are peer reviewed international journal papers. Her research is interdisciplinary and she has been collaborating with natural scientists, planners and designers internationally, particularly within the United States, Canada, Japan and Europe.