What a week with the delivery of two long awaited national imperatives:
Australian National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA) — understanding and adapting to climate risks (heat, fire, flood, biodiversity, etc.)
Australia’s 2035 emissions reduction target — 62-70%+ emissions cut from 2005 levels
What can architects do in response, to help address these in positive ways? More importantly, what should architects do?
With the AIA National Climate Action Sustainability Committee (NCASC) I have been developing a framework called Handprints of Good Design. This aims to accommodate the unique qualities of different places, people, and projects while remaining practical and inspiring. It aims to create opportunities for truly transformative outcomes, as it engage peers, colleagues, and clients in a meaningful and memorable way.
While "footprints" measure the negative impacts of our actions, "handprints" focus on the positive outcomes we create. By shifting attention from minimising harm to maximising benefit, this framework energises people to envision and deliver projects that actively contribute to better outcomes rather than simply reducing damage or doing less bad.
So – how can this be applied to helping architects consider how to shape their work to contribute positively to dealing with the NCRA and 20235 emissions reduction target? Here are some ideas to start the discussion.
1. Bringing the Story of Place to Life
Focus: Deep connection to Country, context, climate risks and biodiversity
Centring Country in design: Engage Traditional Custodians to understand Country’s stories, seasonal cycles, and ecological indicators to inform design responses to local climate risks (fire, flood, drought resilience).
Climate-informed site planning: Incorporate projected climate risk data (from NCRA) into early design — e.g. avoid flood-prone land, allow for heatwave refuges, plan for urban cooling.
Regenerate ecosystems: Prioritise biodiversity-positive landscapes — native planting, tree canopy, soil health and water systems that enhance local ecological resilience.
2. Celebrating Resourcefulness
Focus: Decarbonising materials and energy, reducing waste, circular design
Design for net zero whole-life carbon: Use fabric-first passive design, electrify all systems, and prioritise low/zero-carbon materials (mass timber, recycled/reclaimed, low-carbon concrete).
Design lean and light: Minimise size, complexity and material use; adapt and reuse existing buildings to avoid new embodied carbon.
Circular resource flows: Design for disassembly and future reuse; integrate on-site renewable energy and water harvesting to close local resource loops.
3. Enabling Communities to Thrive
Focus: Social resilience, health, equity, adaptive capacity
Design for social cohesion: Create inclusive, accessible, and biophilic spaces that support mental and physical health, especially during climate stresses (heatwaves, disasters).
Support climate equity: Prioritise affordable, climate-resilient housing and public spaces that reduce energy poverty and increase community adaptive capacity.
Co-design and local engagement: Include local communities, builders and suppliers to build local knowledge, skills and economic resilience.
4. Fostering ‘Long Now’ Thinking of Good Ancestors
Focus: Designing for resilience, longevity, adaptability
Future climate-ready design: Design for the next 50–100 years, using NCRA projections — ensure buildings can adapt to changing climate conditions, functions, and demographics.
Value and adapt existing fabric: Retain and upgrade existing structures and materials to preserve embodied carbon and cultural heritage.
Regenerative use of resources: Restore biodiversity and natural systems as part of every project, leaving the site better than found.
5. Inspiring and Enabling Capacity and Agency
Focus: Empowering teams, clients and industry to scale climate action
Build climate literacy: Train teams and clients in carbon, resilience and regenerative design principles; embed climate risk and carbon literacy in procurement and briefing.
Lead by example: Share project stories, data and lessons (successes and failures) to normalise ambitious climate-positive design.
Champion ethical supply chains: Specify materials with low carbon, non-toxic ingredients and verified ethical labour, showing others it’s possible.
How this supports national goals
Mitigates risk: Designs that anticipate and adapt to hazards reduce long-term disaster costs and community vulnerability (NCRA).
Cuts emissions: Prioritising retrofit, lean design, passive performance, electrification and renewables directly reduces built environment emissions, essential for the 2035 target.
Builds resilience + equity: Creating healthy, inclusive, climate-adaptive places ensures all communities can thrive in a changing climate.