School of Architecture and Built Environment

Adapting to climate change comes top of our list for one simple reason: if we don’t find a way to successfully adapt, the situation will move from grave to existential.

The reality of climate change and the necessity of our adaptation to it are integral parts of the School’s teaching and research agenda.

The consequences of climate change for how we live and interact, the structures we build and live in, the spaces we design, and the materials we produce and use are vitally important.

In SABE, the value of Indigeneity is of utmost importance. This value is reflects our respect for the vast body of Aboriginal knowledge that needs to be shared, for the experience of a different wisdom – human, societal, environmental – and for a discovery process without which we will never be whole.This knowledge and experience influences how we think, what we teach, and what we research.

Embedding Country into our courses is critical to helping us achieve our aims. We have a number of Indigenous teaching staff, and the largest intake of Indigenous students in architecture and built environment degrees in Australia.

We have an ethical and moral responsibility to work toward the betterment of the human condition – first in the local community and then in the wider world.

SABE is concerned with equity of access to learning, resources, and tools without reference to wealth, nationality, race, religion or gender. We champion that particular conscience in our curriculum, activities, workplace and products. We offer innovative extra-curricular programs that improve social outcomes for disadvantaged groups. We also offer elective courses that enable our students to experience other cultures and ways of living while positively impacting social and infrastructure outcomes for the communities they work with.

Where others speak of gender equity as a goal, we know it as an everyday reality – not only across male-female lines but by embracing LGBTQIA+ diversity. We are the first architecture and built environment school in Australia to have achieved gender equity in our staff.

More than an achievement though, gender equity in all its richness is a prized value that alters perspectives, practices, insights and culture to the benefit of the whole. Gender equity is never a ‘done thing’, but a pursuit to be maintained.

Our value of individual agency speaks of more than just an education of information, but a training to think, reason, analyse and solve difficult questions in a challenging world.

We train students to change, induce the bravery required to confront difficulty, and strive to be methodically and rigorously inquisitive.