SETU Second and Third Year Architecture students were recently brought together for a workshop led by Dr Liam McCarton, and Dr Sean O Hogain, Lecturers at TU Dublin, whose research expertise focuses the integration of Nature Based Solutions for resilient cities and communities, including rainwater harvesting and adopting a zero waste approach to water.

Following on from a guest lecture the previous year, their workshop was entitled “Design Energy and Water In”, and provided the students with an introduction to Nature Based Solutions and hybrid infrastructure, offering definitions, contexts, theory and background.  They invited the students to explore their NBS toolkit in a practical scheme type design, exploring resilience with diversity and sustainability, as well as conducting a vulnerability analysis on their chosen sites by incorporating three sessions:

  1. Introduction to Nature Based Solutions and Hybrid Infrastructure
  2. Exploring Resilience
  3. Developing a Nature Based Solution strategy

In these sessions, they explored the theory and background, and then led a studio session to explore the vulnerability analyses on various chosen sites.