Speaker
Description
The transition toward sustainable, climate-resilient urban environments is one of the critical challenges of the 21st century. University campuses, as microcosms of urban systems, present unique opportunities to prototype and evaluate innovative approaches for the green transition. As hubs of education, research, and community engagement, university campuses are ideally positioned to explore integrative solutions that align with global climate action goals and promote environmental stewardship. This paper investigates the potential of Geodesign as a participatory, data-driven framework for transforming campus spaces to align with sustainability and climate goals.
This study, framed within the EU Horizon 2020 PROBONO project, explores the implementation of Geodesign methods at two university campuses—University College Dublin (UCD) in Ireland and Aarhus University (AU) in Denmark—highlighting the critical role of stakeholder engagement and innovative tools in collaborative design. Both workshops utilised tools such as Cartospot.com, ArcGIS StoryMap, and Geodesignhub.com to support participatory surveys, collaborative mapping, geospatial analysis, and stakeholder negotiations. At UCD, the geodesign workshop titled “Common Ground: Campus, Community, and Climate” focused on campus edge transformations by engaging local community members, city officials, and architecture students. Although an academic exercise, the Geodesign activities served as a reflective passage, enabling participants to rethink and refine design visions for the campus, aligning with the new UCD strategy to 2030 “Breaking Boundaries”. Workshop outcomes informed the design studio work, where undergraduate students were tasked with designing climate pavilions addressing challenges such as campus permeability, housing, and climate resilience.
At AU, the one-day Geodesign workshop titled “AU Viborg Campus Transformation” aimed to support local PROBONO partners in the transformation of the Research Centre Foulum into the AU Viborg Campus. The workshop involved researchers, educators, and community representatives in collaboratively mapping stories and values of the current research centre and strategy development for the new campus. The workshop produced actionable strategies to enhance biodiversity, transportation, and energy efficiency while preserving heritage inside the research centre.
Together, these workshops demonstrated the effectiveness of digital tools and stakeholder engagement in delivering impactful design solutions, with UCD’s process providing a reflective framework to reimagine the campus and AU’s offering a structured, intensive approach for sustainable transition. By comparing these case studies, this paper identifies best practices and transferable insights for deploying Geodesign in campus contexts. The findings underscore the efficacy of participatory frameworks in aligning academic institutions with global climate action objectives, positioning university campuses as exemplars of the green transition. Through the synthesis of pedagogical innovation, stakeholder collaboration, and technological tools, Geodesign emerges as a transformative methodology for addressing spatial, social, and environmental challenges in academia and beyond.
| Keywords | geodesign; green transition; university campuses; participatory frameworks; climate resilience |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
