Dr Emilio Jose Garcia is an architect and urban designer. Since 2013, he has been working as a Senior Lecturer in Sustainability and Resilience at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has been teaching, practicing, and researching in Argentina, Mexico, and New Zealand while participating in international competitions and conferences in America, Europe, and Asia. He won a Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction in 2008. His current research concerns the development of new areas of study related to sustainability, resilience and their applications to urban and architectural design practices. His book, "Unravelling Sustainability and Resilience in the Built Environment" (2017), explores what sustainability and resilience mean when applied to the built environment, how they are related, and why they are still essential concepts for designers. His latest book "Collapsing Gracefully: making a Built Environment That Is Fit for the Future" (2021), challenges design approaches based on the myth that economic growth and technological development can solve social and environmental crises while proposing ways to avoid them.Brenda Vale is an architect and academic. Along with Robert Vale, she wrote one of the first books on sustainable design and architecture, “The Autonomous House”, in 1975. Following their design of several award-winning sustainable commercial buildings in the UK, they designed and built the UK’s first autonomous house in 1993 and the first zero-emissions settlement in 1998. They have received international recognition, including the United Nations and European Solar Energy Society awards. They developed the Australian government’s National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS). Other books include “Time to Eat the Dog? The real guide to sustainable living”, which analysed the impact on the environment of a western life-style and things people do every day, and “Living within a Fair Share Ecological Footprint”, which has chapters written by many of their former and existing postgraduate students. The book "Architecture on the Carpet" explores the links between architecture and construction toys such as Meccano and Lego over the last hundred years. Recently, Brenda has co-authored many environmental books, including “The Environmental Impact of cities. Death by democracy and capitalism” (2023), “Heating with Wolves, Cooling with Cacti: Thermo-bio-architectural Framework (ThBA)” (2021), and “Everyday Lifestyles and Sustainability: The Environmental Impact Of Doing The Same Things Differently”(2018).
