A leading climate‑resilience architecture academic has warned that new thinking is needed in how modern buildings are designed to cope with a warming climate. According to Susan Roaf, professor emeritus at Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, most modern public and private buildings are simply not designed for the impending realities of the 2030s and 2040s climates.
With more than 50 years of experience in extreme‑climate design, from the deserts of Iraq to Antarctica, Professor Roaf warned that as weather events intensify, less climate‑adapted buildings may increase health risks and place additional pressure on services. ‘We are moving into a world that is getting significantly warmer, with extreme weather records being broken year after year,’ she said. ‘Our workplaces, public sector care facilities and our own homes must be designed to cope with future conditions and currently “modern” designs simply are not compatible with this reality. The government’s focus now is on warm homes but the need for cool homes is growing.
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‘More intense storms, heatwaves and cold snaps place additional pressure on energy systems,’ she continued. ‘We need to be designing buildings and homes that will remain habitable should these systems fail.’
Roaf’s warnings are clearly set out her new book Adaptive Thermal Comfort: At the Extremes, co‑authored with leading comfort experts Fergus Nicol and Michael Humphreys.
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‘For instance, with more people now working from home or in hybrid patterns, the cost and usefulness of large glass office building types must be looked at more closely,’ Professor Roaf added. ‘The higher the structures, the higher energy demands and the more vulnerable they are to over-heating and -cooling during power outages when mechanical systems fail. We’ve already seen what happens when buildings cannot function without electricity. Recent winters showed that some rural Scottish communities experienced extended power interruptions, during which lightweight homes cooled more quickly than traditional constructions.’
The same design logic is now embedded in hospitals, schools and care settings, Roaf warned – buildings that often have sealed facades, restricted or non‑existent opening windows and ventilation that can spread pathogens between rooms with recirculating air.
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‘During COVID, studies in Scottish hospitals found that naturally ventilated spaces were associated with lower transmission risk compared with some mechanically ventilated settings,’ she said. ‘In 2020, Lanarkshire acute hospitals introduced an enhanced infection‑prevention package that included greater use of natural ventilation, which was associated with reduced COVID‑19 clusters. Yet many new hospitals have limited natural ventilation. In a heatwave or power interruption, this can make it harder to manage indoor temperatures and air quality for vulnerable patients.’
Roaf argues that there is an urgent need to globally move to the next generation of climate-safe, low-impact ‘mixed‑mode’ buildings that can run on local energy with sun and natural ventilation, shading and energy storage for as much of the year as possible and only resort to heating and cooling when and where needed.
‘Our research makes one thing clear – we need to prepare ourselves and our societies to live decently in the very different climates of the future. To do so we need common sense and good science to lead us,’ Roaf said. ‘That cannot be done in silos. It requires genuine collaboration between government, regulators, health and care leaders, architects, engineers and communities to deliver buildings that are safe, healthy and resilient by design.’