Sinéad is a PhD student for the Horiozon 2020 project SOLOCLIM (Solutions for outdoor climate adaptation) which combines academic and industry partners to encourage applied research. In 2019 she graduated from a Master in Advanced Ecological Building at the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona, following a Bachelor of Environments (Urban Design) at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Between degrees she worked in disaster response shelter projects in The Philippines and Nepal

 

SUPERVISORY TEAM:

Prof. Marialena Nikolopoulou
Dr. Richard Watkins

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Designing Shade: Responsive Systems for Climate adaptation at street scale

Warming cities need rapid, easily deployed and scalable cooling strategies that can adapt to the diverse range of microclimates found within the urban environment. This research through design project focuses on designing shade, where the focus is on a responsive system rather than a singular shading device, and consideration of how the system works over multiple scales drives the process. i.e a shade system that can adapt to changing environmental variables from a daily to seasonal time scale, and to changing user needs as urban areas change and develop. The system combines digital tools for localised adapatation to the environment, a modular cube geometry that allows the same physical objects to be combined in different configurations and easily installed and removed,  and the use of glass fibre as a potential cool material. The research also validates a workflow using open source parametric tools as alternatives to more specialised microclimate equipment and software.