“Urbanism and sustainability”, a conference by Nico Larco, a lecturer from the University of Oregon
On 7th May, we had the opportunity to receive a lecture on urbanism and sustainability from the architect Nico Larco, lecturer at the School of Architecture and Allied Arts of the University of Oregon (USA).
Nico Larco has years of experience working in the field of sustainable urban development. He is co-founder and co-director of the Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI), a multidisciplinary organisation that specialises in sustainable development and has received several international prizes for his work. In spring, he was a visiting lecturer at the ETSAB, with his stay being funded by a Fulbright scholarship.
Since 2012, over half of the world’s population has been living in urban areas. With the effects of climatic change, which is now becoming increasingly evident, and the continuous degradation of the natural environment, sustainability has become a critical and indeed fundamental theme within urban planning. Starting from this premise, Larco gave us a presentation based on a scheme for evaluating the different aspects of sustainable urban design, ranging from the macro to the micro scale. This approach did not only help us to understand what the most important subjects to consider should be when analysing an urban project, from the planning stage through to the constructions themselves, but also helped us to understand the relations and interactions between all of the different elements involved.
