Sergio Palleroni

Sergio Palleroni, architect and professor at the University of Texas, focuses his professional attention towards designing for impoverished and marginalized communities around the world. As a professor, Palleroni has provided his students with opportunities to design and build orphanages in Africa and affordable homes for Native Americans in the state of Washington. For these efforts, Palleroni has received the S. Sterling Munroe Public Service Teaching Award and has been honored with the AIA National Education Award.

Re-Defining the Role of University in the Public Realm: The University as Environmental Citizen

Given the rapid rate of urbanization globally which is compounding the severe ecological, physical, and population challenges that most of the urban environments are facing, cities are in urgent need to re-define their traditional roles and practices. One important, but largely under-utilized resource, and potential participant, in this re-definition can be the Universities and Institutions of higher education. Universities have historically played a passive role in the social and political realm of the urban environments they inhabit. Recently this has began to change as these institutions have themselves been undergoing change, much of it driven by many of the very same challenges that cities are facing. Not only are university resources being strained by social and economic factors, but students and client communities are demanding educational programs that have increased relevance to the issues they face in the 21st century. These significant institutional and pedagogical changes in curriculum and practices have created a re-engagement of the Universities in the social and political and environmental fabric they inhabit.

This presentation will explore some possible models that are emerging in Universities in theory and practice, which are helping to make ‘environmental citizens’ of universities, and are helping to meet the challenges faced by the communities they inhabit. In particular the presentation will explore emergent role of Institutions in Taiwan and the US and the pedagogical and institutional models that have emerged to meet that challenge.

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