Engaging architects and architectural students in global warming awareness

Today, Global warming is a major dilemma facing our globe that has changed the world concerns to reconsider the pollution sources affecting planet earth. This along with the tremendous increase in carbon dioxide emissions all over the world in the last decade has simulated the EDRG (Environmental Design Research Group, at the Architectural Engineering and Environmental Design Department) at the AAST (Arab Academy for Science and Technology) to setting the Environmental awareness campaign in the Schools of Alexandria, Egypt. The campaign is run mainly by Architecture professors, and both graduates and postgraduates of the architecture department and this is where the novelty of this campaign mainly lies and will be discussed in this paper. Environmental issues are not properly integrated in curricula of secondary schools in Egypt, and attract quite a little attention there. Continuous research carried out by the EDRG founded by the authors of this paper highlighted the problem of local environmental awareness in Egypt and that it was one of the main obstacles behind lessening pollution rates in this region and saving the environment. Therefore, this campaign has set this awareness program as today’s kids are the aim of proper development in Egypt. This project has two main objectives to fulfil; one is to engage the architectural students in raising sustainable and environmental awareness in our non-sustainable societies and second is to raise environmental awareness of school children and the youth by using artistic means, and to encourage them to participate in solution of environmental problems in their communities. Theatre, movie, painting and social role-plays are perceived as an interactive method to speak up global environmental problems in understandable and creative way. The campaign promotes and aware students within all education levels about the main reasons behind global warming, climate change and pollution and the proper use of renewable energy technologies, ecological and sustainable approaches to decrease carbon dioxide emissions all over the world and save our planet earth. The paper considers the role of environmental awareness at an early stage in the proper application of alternative energy sources in our built environment. The environmental awareness campaign is discussed along with its main aims and outcomes in this paper. The paper also contemplates the role of Architects and Architecture students in social interaction and in awareness of their communities