Cooling the Commons is a cross-disciplinary research program composed of projects that builds knowledge about accessible, sustainable and equitable cooling solutions for hot cities, and codesigns ways of activating them with diverse stakeholders.
The program works in an applied way with local and state governments, and community housing providers and residents:
- first analyse existing designed environments for the ways they limit or support community cooling practices;
- then gather design patterns of cooling based on living examples from all over the world that do not rely on technical solutions such as air-conditioning;
- then build on those patterns to collaborate with diverse stakeholders to imagine, codesign, trial and evaluate cooling solutions.
The program has generated numerous popular, academic and non-traditional outputs that have attracted a significant audience. The pilot study, Cooling the Commons, informed the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Council’s Heat Smart Resilience Framework. The output of Cooling common spaces in densifying urban environments, was a pattern book for cool commons, which has influenced the NSW Govt.’s land and property developer Landcom’s approach to development. On the release of the pattern book Lauren Kajewski, Director of Sustainability and Learning at Landcom, stated “We are already implementing some of these patterns in different projects such as Macarthur Heights and Schofields. Upcoming projects are opportunities to test more patterns and continue researching urban heat to make our communities more resilient.”
All this multi-development – high density units – we are all going to be in a hot dome – the heat is just going to sit on top of us!! ...we need housing, but they are not thinking about how to do it. – Disability Carer, Penrith
The latest project of the Cooling the Commons program, Becoming Climate-ready in Social Housing, was awarded funding by the ARC Linkage scheme in 2022. In this project we will codesign low-cost and place-based cooling solutions with culturally and linguistically diverse residents of social housing, and share these social innovations via film, reports, events and an expanded pattern book amongst organisations and institutions nationally and internationally.
Academic affiliates
- Dr Stephen Healy
- Associate Professor Emma Power
- Associate Professor Louise Crabtree-Hayes
- Associate Professor Sebastian Pfautsch
- Emeritus Professor Helen Armstrong
- Professor Katherine Gibson
Industry affiliates
- Landcom
- Link-Wentworth Community Housing
- Bridge Housing Limited
- St George Community Housing Limited
- Faith Housing Alliance
- Bidwill Uniting
Related links
- Pilot Report (PDF, 2.5MB)
- Landcom Report
- Cooling the Commons website
- Western Sydney Heat and Social Housing Project
- Discover our Bachelor of Design Honours – Social Innovation Project
Image credits
- Kids enjoying Fiona Foley’s Lotus Line water sculpture, Redfern Park. Photo: Helen Armstrong.
- Coolth at Tench Reserve, Penrith. Photo: Helen Armstrong
- Exploring the patterns: Landcom codesign workshop. Photo: Abby Mellick Lopes
- Waterplay, Green Square. Photo: Cameron Tonkinwise
