Living Labs as Leverage for a Sustainable Transition: Overview of Student Research in the Caribbean Context

Abstract

Awareness of the severity and consequences of global warming has increased in recent decades, and as a consequence the efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The need to shift from a fossil fuel base economy to renewable sources of energy has also dramatic impact for the construction sector. However, despite internationally agreed paths of sustainable transition there has been limited, tangible actions in the Caribbean. The building industry seem to embrace a conservative energy inefficient and unsustainable position rather than moving to more sustainable alternative ways of building and construction.

Scholars in science and technology studies argue that unsustainable daily practices in the built environment are embedded in wider socio-technological systems that are locked-in to path dependent development and are resistant to change and innovation. However, under specific conditions, windows of opportunities can arise in which system wide innovations can take place. New approaches, such as Strategic Niche Management and Living Labs, provide a new orientation to societal change in which such opportunities are actively created.

In this paper we argue that higher education, and in particular curricula in the build environment can play an important role in triggering societal innovation. Moreover, the pedagogy of the architectural studio, when broadened to actors external to education provides potentials to act as a strategic niche or a living lab stimulating a broader innovation in the construction industry. We discuss our experience with pilot architectural studios in the Caribbean, focusing on energy efficiency on university campuses. The paper concludes that although the impact of the pilot studios remained limited, they have under a number of conditions, the potential to act as Living Labs.