The Summer All Over the World: Designing for Coolth explores how architecture can respond to rising global temperatures and the growing scarcity of public spaces that offer refuge from extreme heat. In a time when blackouts, bushfires, and floods increasingly disrupt access to cooling, the project asks how design can foster collective resilience and environmental care.
Coolth is the opposite of warmth: a state of being in a pleasantly low temperature. The studio examines how comfort and temperature are sensed, measured, and spatially experienced. Coolth is not just technical but cultural and social. In architecture, spaces of coolth are conceived through drawings, diagrams, and models, but are also constantly negotiated through environmental engineering, situated knowledge, First Nations’ practices, and changing conceptions of what it means to be comfortable.
What this amounts to is political, social, and environmental complexity when designing for coolth. The project centres on designing a community cooling centre in Central Western Sydney: an inclusive place for gathering during heat events. The proposal integrates spaces for heat ambassadors, health volunteers, and communal activity.
At its core, the architecture should mediate relationships across different scales, from the human body to the planet, providing space for social solidarity while resisting market forces. This type of spatial practice – more expansive than traditional architecture – grapples with questions that are at once technical and existential.
With thanks to the following contributors and critics:
Helen Armstrong, WSU, Endriana Audisho, UTS, Daniel Barber, Technical University of Eindhoven, Ashley Dunn, DunnHillam Architects, Guillermo Fernandez-Abascal, ADP, Lee Hillam, DunnHillam Architects, Abby Lopes, UTS, Xavier Nuttal, Arup, Elyse Stanes, University of Wollongong, Jennifer Turpin, Jennifer Turpin Studio, Nadia Wagner, USYD
