Architects as Educators: Reconceptualising the role of Design Professional in Owner-Occupied Low Carbon Retrofit

Abstract

Retrofitting owner-occupied homes is crucial for achieving the UK Government’s Net-Zero target. However, regulatory policies and incentives have not been effective in driving this change. Recent research has highlighted the value of building professionals, particularly architects, in promoting a sensibility towards low-carbon retrofitting. Despite this, the transformative potential of architects in micro-firms involved in domestic projects remains largely unexplored. Existing concepts have predominantly conceptualised professionals within social structures and networks, neglecting the professional agency that manifests at the interpersonal level. To address this gap, this study adopts a novel 'nexus-of-practices' approach, which focuses on the interconnectedness of various practices, and 'ecologies of practices', which examines the educational influence of different practitioners in their mutual connections. This combination allows for investigating architects' educative roles within the shared time spaces of design interactions. This analytical framework examines architects’ agency as knowing, which finds reflection in changing owner-occupiers’ engagement in house improvement projects by co-creating retrofit competencies.
Drawing on six observations and fifteen in-depth interviews with architects and owner-occupiers, who were the vanguard of retrofit practices in micro-firms across England and Wales, the study traces the circulation of co-created competences to the practices of participants. Special attention is paid to how architects' practices contribute to the creation of competences that initiate owner-occupiers into retrofitting. Additionally, this research examines how elements of architects' practices are configured to facilitate these contributions. Findings reveal diverse augmentative, transformative, directive practices through which architects initiate owner-occupiers to engage with retrofitting in personally relevant ways. Likewise, architects reshape their engagement in design through adopting socio-technical competences, cultivating the meanings of ethical practice, and advancing communications with owner-occupiers through the imaginative utilization of material arrangements.
The research, by highlighting architects’ ability to seize opportunities for encouraging owner-occupied retrofit and maximising the environmental benefits of upgrading existing homes, brings their invisible transformative agency to the fore. The interdisciplinary nature of the study, which combines social and learning theories, expands understanding of practice theory to bear on retrofitting as an extraordinary complex practice and of education in approaches to low carbon transition. Findings also have implications for architectural education, fostering relevant forms of professionalism, and for policies that facilitate these educational collaborations between professionals and owner-occupiers. The study’s qualitative scope, selective sampling of retrofit-specialised architects, and its focus on early design interactions impose certain limitations on the generalisability of findings. Future research could build upon this work by exploring retrofit education across a wider range of architectural and construction practices and examining the long-term evolution of retrofit competencies among owner-occupiers.

Date of Award	26 Jun 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Northumbria University
Supervisor	Tara Hipwood (Supervisor) & Peter Holgate (Supervisor)