Duncan Baker-Brown presenting at COP27

Reduce climate impact now – sustainable construction expert reflects on COP27 experience

University of Brighton’s sustainable construction expert Duncan Baker-Brown reflects on COP27 and the pressing need to decarbonise global construction.

Duncan Baker-Brown attended the climate change conference in Egypt as co-chair of Royal Institute of British Architect’s Climate Task and Finish Group, contributing to debates on measures to decarbonise the built environment and reflecting on the urgent need for action. He highlighted the key role that architects must play, the importance of reducing whole life carbon, as well as discussing retrofitting and technology policy worldwide.

Construction creates an estimated third of overall waste and at least 40% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, with approximately half of the raw materials extracted from the planet each year destined for the world’s built environment. Yet COP27 was only the second of the high-profile international gatherings to discuss the built environment, following its first-time appearance on the agenda at COP26 last year in Glasgow.

On the last day of COP27, Baker-Brown witnessed the UN’s Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction launching a commitment to a ‘Buildings Breakthrough‘, with the UK joining France, Germany and 16 other countries confirming their support – with others set to join. The ‘Buildings Breakthrough’ commitment demands that “near-zero emission and resilient buildings are the new normal by 2030”, providing a joint vision and a rallying point for all countries.

Leading the way on sustainability

As a practising architect and environmental activist, Duncan’s research on sustainable construction informs his lecturing in architecture at University of Brighton, complementing the university’s broader commitment to providing practical responses to global challenges such as tackling climate change and creating sustainable and creative economies.

Researchers at the University of Brighton are playing their part in creating a greener, cleaner future with a diverse range of projects. These include agenda-setting work on the role of hydrogen engines in both the private and road freight sectors, exploring how to create the UK’s first zero-emission port, piloting the world’s first 100% hydrogen fired bricks, and driving change in sustainable fashion.


As a pioneering example of putting principles into practice, Duncan Baker-Brown also created the Brighton Waste House on the university’s City campus – the world’s first permanent building built almost entirely from so-called waste material – in the process diverting 55 tonnes of material that would have contributed to carbon emissions through landfill or incineration.

Waste House built almost entirely from waste materials


Duncan also played a key role in crafting Brighton & Hove’s Circular Economy Routemap published earlier this year, setting out an action plan behind a sustainable green growth strategy for the city to 2035. The University of Brighton is also at the heart of regional plans exploring green retrofits of thousands of local authority houses which will slash both energy bills and carbon emissions, while saving tenants millions of pounds in fuel bills.

Building on COP27 debates

At COP27, Baker-Brown took part in a panel discussion which explored the collaboration between businesses and governments that is needed to create a thriving and resilient buildings sector, capable of delivering for a net zero economy.

He said: “One of the most positive aspects of COP27 was the agreement to deliver a global fund for loss and damage, providing money to cover the existing economic, cultural and social impacts caused by climate changes to benefit some of the most vulnerable people across the world.”


However, it was not all good news. The goal of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius was described by UK COP26 President Alok Sharma as on “life support”, while UN Climate Chief Simon Stiell warned that current national plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 are not enough to stop further potentially devastating global temperature rises.

“It’s clear that we need to reduce our climate impact now. It’s undeniable that buildings are a significant source of emissions and construction design and practice has to change. Collective action is needed to embed carbon targets into regulations, and sustainability into planning and procurement processes. But we must commit to reusing materials that are currently destined for landfill, rather than continuing to plunder the planet’s raw materials”.

Duncan Baker-Brown
Photo of Jordan Whitewood in a wheelchair in a forest

Meet the Brighton activist fighting for disability justice in architecture

Architectural researcher and educator Jordan Whitewood-Neal is leading research, conversation and action for disability justice in building design. 

As Disability Awareness Month begins, University of Brighton architecture graduate Jordan Whitewood-Neal is leading a think tank at London School of Architecture, calling for the retrofit of buildings to better support disabled and ageing communities. “The architectural discipline has in the last few years finally begun to address race and gender inequities, but disability always trails behind,’ he said in a recent interview with the Royal Institute of British Architect’s RIBA Journal.

Having recently completed a master’s degree at Brighton, Jordan has been picked out by RIBA as one of its 2022 Rising Stars. “We can already see him making a difference to the way disability is talked about in projects and within the profession,” said Eleanor Young, one of the judges on the RIBA panel.

Describing himself as an activist as well as researcher, Whitewood-Neal has also co-founded the disability research collective Dis/, drawing on his own experiences as a wheelchair user. Teaming up with James Zatka-Haas and Anna Curzon Price, Dis/ grew out of an event at the London Festival of Architecture in which physically disabled and neuro-diverse creatives shared their experiences of navigating cities – stories Whitewood-Neal said usually remained “completely untold”.  

By leading research and conversation alongside driving action for disability justice in architectural education and practice, he hopes to raise the profile of disabled people within the profession. “A fundamental issue in architectural practice is a scarcity of disabled architects and designers,” he said. 

Dis/ aims to pair disabled architectural researchers with disabled people from outside the profession to talk critically about the city and the architectural needs of people with disabilities – and the struggles many needlessly face. Jordan sees this as not only spurring a consideration of disability as a critical part of the design process, but also a way to challenge the perceived homogeneity of disability – which too often looks no further than installing ramps. 

Jordan said: “After finishing my Masters in Architecture at the University of Brighton I was offered the chance to continue my studies there and expand on my ideas on the Architectural Research MRes. Since starting the course, I have presented my work at various conferences and events as well as undertaken projects including developing a design studio brief titled Retrofit as Reparation that I will be co-leading at the London School of Architecture.

“My research project on the MRes, tutored by Ben Sweeting and Tilo Amhoff, gave me an opportunity to explore novel research methods, alongside more conventional forms of archival research. This research has led to wider work campaigning for more inclusive architectural teaching, as well as founding Dis.”

Follow Jordan Whitewood-Neal on Twitter: @Jordan_WN_

Group of three females and one male in front of large screen

Gamification, Xboxes, and ex-prisoners: Brighton hosts 21st European Conference on e-Learning

The University of Brighton was proud to host the 21st European Conference on e-Learning (ECEL 2022), which took place on 27-28 October 2022. 

Supported by the School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering, the conference was chaired by Brighton Principal Lecturers Dr Panagiotis Fotaris and Dr Andrew Blake. More than a hundred delegates from 33 countries attended in person and online, to hear about cutting-edge research in the field of technology-enhanced learning.

Continue reading “Gamification, Xboxes, and ex-prisoners: Brighton hosts 21st European Conference on e-Learning”

uncan-Baker Brown inside the Brighton Waste House

University of Brighton helps to shape city’s vision of the future

Brighton & Hove Council have published a Route Map outlining a Circular Economy strategy to 2035 – drawing on key input from the University of Brighton.

Brighton architecture lecturer Duncan Baker-Brown has been a global pioneer in innovative ways to cut the huge amount of waste and carbon emissions that afflict current building construction. At present, this contributes a massive 40% of overall global CO2 emissions and at least a third of the world’s waste.

Continue reading “University of Brighton helps to shape city’s vision of the future”
Catapult connected places logo

Brighton chosen as site for new testbed to improve ageing healthcare 

University of Brighton will play a key role in developing improved home-based care for the growing number of older people in the city and beyond.

The university will build on its long-term innovation partnership with Brighton and Hove City Council as part of the national Homes for Healthy Ageing Testbed project, overseen by the Connected Places Catapult (CDP)the UK government’s innovation agency for cities, transport and place leadership.

Continue reading “Brighton chosen as site for new testbed to improve ageing healthcare “

Chris Stafford at the STEM poster exhibition

Brighton researcher puts Britain’s science future on parliamentary display

University early career researcher Chris Stafford has showcased his work to UK parliamentarians in the STEM For Britain annual poster exhibition.

Dr Stafford is a Research Fellow in the University of Brighton’s world-renowned Advanced Engineering Centre, and was among a group of rising young scientists chosen as finalists in the STEM For Britain competition. This asks entrants to create a poster highlighting and explaining a current project, collecting flagship UK research to be presented to MPs, Peers and members of the influential Parliamentary & Scientific Committee.

Continue reading “Brighton researcher puts Britain’s science future on parliamentary display”

Brighton researcher floating in zero gravity

Brighton research team go weightless in latest space research project

A University of Brighton team has carried out a set of experiments flying over France on parabolic flights that create weightless conditions similar to space.

The weightless effect is achieved flying a series of steep upward and downward manoeuvres which can be compared to riding a rollercoaster with a total drop of 3km (10,000 feet)! The flights from Bordeaux’s Novespace centre are carried out by a specially adapted Airbus A310 plane that climbs then plummets in a way which balances gravitational forces to provide a sequence of short periods of weightlessness lasting around 22 seconds – but experienced 31 times each flight.

Working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Liverpool, the team from University of Brighton’s world-renowned Advanced Engineering Centre saw Professor Marco Marengo – a veteran of nearly 20 ‘weightlessness flights’ – working alongside Dr Nicolas Miché (project lead) and PhD student Francois Clemens to test pulsating heat pipes under microgravity conditions, looking at shape changes and capillary action in different arrangements of bent tubes.

Pulsating heat pipes are used to move heat from one place to another without fans or pumps, and can be used to help satellites and space probes stay at the correct temperature in the challenging conditions of space. The new system being tested by the Brighton team involved an innovative flexible form of heat pipe designed to be a forerunner of future flexible electronics, deployable radiators and booms in space operations.

Past experiments carried out by the Brighton team floating above France have looked at how heat pipes of different configurations and materials react and operate in different gravities, with implications both for safety in space as well as the effective conduct of experiments on orbital vehicles such as the International Space Station (ISS).

University of Brighton postgraduates also won the European Space Agency’s student project competition Fly Your Thesis in 2018 – after being the first UK team selected to take part in the long-running programme for 14 years.

Professor Marengo said: “What is important in this kind of flights is doing experiments directly on  set-ups under weightless conditions, which makes this program different to all the other tools for microgravity experiments, such as sounding rockets, drop towers and the ISS.

I have experienced more than 300 parabolas – over 100 minutes with absence of weight. The first time is a surprise, since you have really the impression to fly, to float in the air. It is difficult to get used to this feeling because it lasts only 22 seconds, preceded and followed by a period in hyper gravity, which can be rather heavy to cope with. In the transition between microgravity and hyper gravity, you can also feel dizzy even as frequent 0g flier.”

Novespace is part of the French Space Agency (CNES), and its Airbus A310 ZERO-G is one of the world’s largest parabolic flight aircraft. UK involvement in space has surged in recent years, with rocket bases planned for Scotland and Cornwall, and nearly 45.000 people now employed in the industry.  The UK’s latest National Space Strategy plans to invest more than £6 billion over the next 10 years to strengthen the UK as a world class space nation.  The UK Space Agency provides active support to student and research team access to microgravity platforms such as parabolic flights.