“If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you,” were eleven words expertly aimed at the neck of the world by a 16-year-old Greta Thunberg in 2019. Galvanised and tenacious, a swarm of estimated 4 million people worldwide hit the pavement on what would become the largest climate strike in history – 1.4 million were school-aged children.
As members of a generation that’s on track to be the most educated yeti, many of these young protesters have since left high school to join the rising tide of students enrolled in higher education worldwide. From primary to post-graduate, the continuing influx of powerful, political, and progressive students demands sustainable campuses that incubate potential – we owe that to the kids.
The eyes upon us
The eyes upon us are Generation Z. Digital natives who are more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation, Gen Z is progressive and politically minded. Seven in 10 want an activist government, over half believe climate change is due to human activity, and an increasing amount are pursuing environmental-related degrees and careers – because “there’s no point in anything else.”
Like anyone with great potential, Gen Z needs support. Aged between eight and 23 years old, their anxiety around climate change and government inaction is described as a ‘global phenomenon’. 59 percent of this generation is extremely worried about climate change (84 percent are moderately worried) and over 45 percent are saying their feelings negatively affect their daily lives. Peering into an uncertain future, over half the generation is feeling sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty.
To that end, acting on environmental sustainability matters more than just caring for our environment – it's crucial to protect the wellbeing of our climate-change-anxious kids. Sustainability commitments are an increasingly important factor for students deciding where to attend university, meaning that higher education is “no longer about being the best in the world but being the best for the world.
” If we continually fail to support Gen Z and reflect their values on campus, then they will vote with their feet and the spaces will go unused.
To support Gen Z is to empower them. By finding ways to instil hope for the longevity of our environment, campuses must evolve to become places that meaningfully improve the behavioural health of Gen Z and help them achieve their full potential. This task requires a tailored, generational approach that demonstrates a dual understanding: activism is education and placemaking is key.
Becoming a living laboratory
Activism has taught young people a suite of skills – leadership, communication, team building, and organisational, democratic, and critical analysis – that they are gladly teaching others. As a result, it’s important that campuses evolve beyond the binary ‘teacher-student’ dynamic to become living laboratories – places with tools to discover, explore, test, create, and evaluate new sustainability practices. Here, the campus acts as teacher in its own right – housing the joy of discovery and interests shared.
There are many ways that a campus might become a living laboratory. More than just a collection of buildings, it’s a place Gen Z can leave their mark and carve out their own narrative. Some might include hands-on learning environments like bio gardens and closed-loop systems, while others may use novel sustainable building materials or promote sustainability research outcomes.
One example is the University of Technology Sydney’s (UTS) ‘Green Genie,’ a pop-up container developed by UTS researchers displayed at the heart of the campus that is 40 times more efficient than trees at removing carbon from the atmosphere.
In any form, living laboratories create hope. By taking every opportunity to showcase advancements in environmental science and sustainable futures, this evolution of the campus puts progress on display in a manner that invites engagement, discovery, and delight, making climate activism the everyday occurrence it should be.
Grounding to place
Gen Z are digital natives and environmental activists in the same breadth. 72 percent use cloud-based education tools to augment their education experience, and some may step inside a physical lecture theatre. Whether organising a march or navigating a group assignment, Gen Z will naturally make the most of the flexibility and autonomy provided in the online realm. The downside is that this level of flexibility can feel rootless and disorienting, leaving them without a sense of belonging.
As Gen Z continues to learn across digital, virtual, and artificial worlds, the natural world will become increasingly important in terms of grounding them in place. While they’re on campus, students need to feel an authentic connection to place. Site agnostic or ‘international’ style architecture that ignores the local micro-climates, culture and landscape can’t provide the connection to nature that these students are fighting for.
Instead, we must commit to designs that respond to what makes a site unique. Within an existing network of trees, the Meadowbank Schools have been organised into twinned, two-storey buildings framing a central hill of libraries covered by cascading gardens. Each teaching level opens directly to nature and a series of connected open ended courtyards creates protected areas for collaboration, performance, and outdoor learning.
Murals by community-endorsed multi-disciplinary artist and Dharug woman Jasmine Seymour also connect the Meadowbank Schools to Place and the ancient narratives of the local Dharug Country on which they stand – depicting local eels, fish, rivers, and birdlife.
Responsible adaptation
Because responsible campus planning provides the opportunity to speak to the environmentally conscience values of the next generation, every opportunity should be taken to retain, re-use and revitalise existing assets.
Tomorrow’s campuses must be vehicles for their own brand of activism. We can minimise our carbon footprint by products and manufactures that offer take-back schemes and recycling or recovery programs, or by reducing adhesives and applied finishes. We can also consider how elements of the design might eventually be re-assembled in alternative locations or recycled in their specific material stream from a projects’ beginning.
Projects like the adaptive reuse of the Forestry Building for the University of Tasmania - which incorporates a lifecycle assessment to measure its carbon impact – have been holistically designed for disassembly, embedding the methods of adaptability into the documentation package.
This approach investigates how the buildings can be deconstructed after a certain lifespan, working to soften the projects’ environmental footprint. Action of this kind can work to alleviate Gen Z’s deeply felt anxiety around their own environmental footprint – becoming beacons of action that align with the values of their users.
Upping the voltage
Teenage climate activist and co-organiser of Sydney’s School Strike 4 Climate march Jean Hinchliffe describes her experience of the day like this: “The whole event carried an electricity that is difficult to describe: it’s as if we had bottled up all the anger and frustration from years of never being listened to and released it into the square, transforming it into a place of undeniable power.”
As designers, we need to create education spaces that spark and conduct this same ‘electricity’. The next iteration of the campus is a holistic, sustainable, action-oriented place that empowers Gen Z by providing opportunities to create change together.
This article was written by Caitlin Murray, Senior User Strategist, Education Strategist and Architect – ERA-co, and republished for Architecture & Design.
