INSTITUTE FOR ARCHITECTURE ADAPTED TO CLIMATE CHANGE
The subject of our interest
Although we respect climate activism as a natural and necessary part of the necessary major social reconstruction, we focus on professional, systemic work based on expert arguments and mutual interdisciplinary connections.
THREATS
The very first step in preparing society for climate change must be the analysis and prediction of threats. In order to be able to propose measures, we must have an idea of how our living conditions will change in the coming decades.
STRATEGIES
The second step in preparing for climate change is setting strategies, options and priorities. The society is unable to prepare for 100% either financially or in terms of time. Therefore, it is necessary to set basic plans and priorities and stick to them and not improvise.
SOLUTIONS
In accordance with the established strategies, we need a comprehensive database of construction-technical, legislative, and organizational measures, accessible to experts and the public. This must contain solutions sorted by priority and investment requirement.
APPLICATIONS
Not all strategies and solutions can or must be applied in all cases. Therefore, it is necessary to design application methods for individual cases according to the scope, type of building and residence, local conditions, threats, possibilities and availability of technical solutions.
Scales of our interest
We are looking for solutions applicable at the smallest possible level, down to the building and the individual, but exclusively in the context of the entire society, landscape and residential contexts.
SOCIETY
We are saving society, not buildings and the planet. That's why society has to go through fundamental adaptation changes.
COUNTRY
The country is a source of life, which suffers a lot from climate change, and it is necessary to protect this resource in our own interest.
TOWN
Cities are the most vulnerable living space. Their adaptation is therefore one of the most important.
DWELLING
Apartments and houses will no longer be just a tool for our comfort and aesthetic enjoyment, but a fundamental bastion of family protection.
Areas of our interest
The only way to successful adaptation is active interdisciplinary cooperation. Society no longer has the time, space or means for isolated disciplines to "play on their sandbox".
Architecture and urban planning
The shape, form and function of our buildings and streets are a basic tool for building the resilience of the urbanized environment against threats associated with climate change.
Constructions of civil engineering
The technical characteristics of buildings must be assessed and designed according to the prediction of future climatic and social conditions, and not according to the standards and laws created in the sixties of the last century.
Technical equipment of buildings
Humanity has created amazing technological possibilities that must be applied to buildings to the best possible extent in order to build energy efficiency and safety.
Energy sources and energy security.
Energy self-sufficiency of units and individuals is a basic prerequisite for adaptation. Renewable and decentralized sources covering at least the basic part of energy needs are the way to energy security.
Landscape engineering
Greenery and nature's amazing ability to adapt to change must be our inspiration and our tool for survival.
Water management
One of the biggest challenges of adapting to climate change is securing fresh water resources. Fresh water is the most valuable liquid on earth and we must treat it accordingly.
Cultural heritage protection
The aim of adaptation measures is not to ensure the survival of homo sapiens as an animal species, but of humanity as a civilization that has been formed for thousands of years and contains a cultural heritage of immense value.
Mechanical engineering
The basic adaptation strategy is the change of society, and not excessive technological optimism, but without new, more economical technologies, machines and equipment, the preservation of advanced civilization as we know it is probably not possible.
Psychology and sociology
Threats from climate change have a strong impact on our mental health. It is said that 70% of Slovaks are concerned about climate change. Adaptation to climate change needs a mentally healthy and strong population.
Food security
Moving food around the planet is not only an ecological tragedy, but in crisis situations, the inability to secure food from local sources can be an unimaginable security threat.
Public health and medicine
Periods of heat, pandemics, migration of subtropical and tropical animal species, all of these represent enormous challenges for public health.
Protection of people and property
Energy poverty, the instability of energy sources, the polarization of society, the rapid opening of social divides, or armed conflicts in neighboring countries inevitably lead to an increase in conflicts in society and threats to individual security.
Civil protection and crisis management
Not only floods, local long-term power outages, but especially the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the threat of an energy collapse perfectly revealed the long-term absolute unpreparedness of society and the state for any crisis situation.
Information technologies
The industrial age of creating and moving physical matter, material idols and burning fossil fuels got us into the situation we are in. Although the advent of the information age has made the dangerous practices of the industrial age more efficient, at the same time information technology represents the only globally accepted tool for correction.
Mass media communication
It was as if there were two angry opposing groups in the public space. The first is made up of people who still believe that nothing is happening, nothing needs to be done, if, from a marketing point of view, they throw a little greenwashing into PR. The second group consists of those who rage at the inaction, blindness and hypocrisy of the first group. It is a very challenging communication challenge to mobilize the entire society for meaningful activity and re-evaluation of priorities in a calm, rational way without scaring and polarizing society.
Mobility
One of the biggest challenges of the time is how to balance the minimization of the ecological footprint of transport while not depriving people of their freedom of movement or making individual transport a luxury for the "upper 1%".
Alternative non-standard solutions
We must not look at movements and "prepper-no-grid-survival" life style such as paranoid, but we must look in their knowledge for adaptation tools that can be used in everyday life and on a more greater scale.