The Length and Breadth of Sustainability: Buildings, History, Culture, and Education
Palmyra palm trees (Borassus flabellifer) near Madras, India. Watercolour by H. Schlagintweit, 1855.
In this Library Chat, Mohamed Elshahed and Radhika Iyengar discuss the intricate connections between climate, architecture, and education. They highlight the need for sustainable architecture, especially in schools, and stress the importance of informal actors and broad participation in climate conversations. They also delve into how climate justice can be pursued within existing structures and share insights on integrating local materials and architectural heritage into education to build resilience and awareness.
Dr. Radhika Iyengar is Director of Education and Research Scholar at the Center for Sustainable Development of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. She leads the Education for Sustainable Development initiatives as a practitioner, researcher, teacher and a manager. Her research interests consist of conducting evaluations of educational programs and international educational development. In addition to directing education initiatives at the Center and fieldwork in over 10 countries, she contributes to the scientific community focusing on international educational development with articles published in reputed journals and reports that are used by both domestic and international stakeholders. She received a distinction from Teachers College, Columbia University on her Ph.D. dissertation Social capital as a determinant of schooling in rural India: A mixed methods study. She received her Master’s degree in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, India.
Mohamed Elshahed is a writer, curator, and critic of architecture. He is the author of Cairo Since 1900: An Architectural Guide (AUC Press, 2020) and was the curator of Cairo Modern at New York’s Center for Architecture (October 2021–March 2022). He earned a Masters from MIT’s Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture and a PhD from NYU’s Department of Middle Eastern Studies. He is the curator of the British Museum’s Modern Egypt Project and of Modernist Indignation, Egypt’s winning pavilion at the 2018 London Design Biennale. In 2019 Apollo Magazine named him among the 40 influential thinkers and artists in the Middle East. In 2011 he founded Cairobserver, a fluid project with six printed magazines distributed for free to stimulate public debates around issues of architecture, heritage, and urbanism. Mohamed is based in Mexico City.
