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Sustainability and Architecture EPQ Ideas

I'm taking maths, physics and art as my A Levels and I want to do an EPQ (dissertation/essay). I want to study architecture and I'm especially interested in sustainability, e.g., self-sufficient buildings, carbon neutral buildings, renewable energy production in buildings (such as solar power) etc. I'm stuck on what question to use for the EPQ, can somebody please give me ideas and examples of successful EPQ questions in this area?

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Universities Forum Helper

Original post by gieraso

im going into architecture this sept and i did an epq artefact on ancient architecture (was hyperfixiated on castles at the time haha) but i would defo recommend going down the artefact route and designing/making a building as you could talk about it in your personal statement later eg i designed a building and taught myself very basic CAD skills so i used that in my personal statement to kinda say that i was so interested in studying arch that i undertook independent work to teach myself these skills. defo think you could do the same with sustainability - maybe researching what actually makes buildings sustainable vs greenwashing eg dismantling buildings and reusing materials instead of demolition as the 5 most used building materials like iron, steel etc are also the most carbon-intensive to produce. alternatively if you'd rather do a report, you could look at the UN's sustainability goals like for sustainable cities and look first on a macro scale at what makes cities sustainable (a bit of urban planning maybe) then into buildings eg countries that are designing brand new so called 'sustainable cities'. as for titles its usually best to go for a 'to what extent has xyz' as you want it to be open ended and something you can have balanced arguments for