20 September 2026 6:12 am
Professionals Explore Buildings vs Climate Challenges

Professionals Explore Buildings vs Climate Challenges

Sep 15, 2026

A modern building featuring lush rooftop gardens under a clear blue sky. by Marian Florinel Condruz via Pexels

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Researchers and industry professionals explore how buildings might better withstand climate pressures

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Conference at Concordia brought together building engineering experts from 43 countries
Concordia University News – September 14, 2026
By Vincent Allaire

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Professionals Explore Buildings vs Climate Challenges

 

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More than 450 researchers, industry professionals, policymakers and students from 43 countries gathered at Concordia from July 20 to 24 for the 17th International Conference on the Durability of Building Materials and Components (DBMC 2026).

Co-hosted by Concordia and the National Research Council Canada (NRC), the conference drew participants from 205 institutions across six continents.

The gathering took place as extreme weather and a changing climate place increasing pressure on buildings and infrastructure. Researchers and practitioners explored how the built environment can remain durable and resilient while the construction sector reduces its environmental footprint.

Presentations addressed climate resilience, low-carbon materials, artificial intelligence, service-life prediction and the long-term performance of buildings and infrastructure. The program featured five keynote lectures, seven workshops, four technical panels, two laboratory tours and 294 technical presentations.

“Hosting DBMC 2026 reinforced Concordia’s role as a hub for international collaboration in building engineering research,” says Hua Ge, professor in Concordia’s Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, member of the Centre for Zero Energy Building Studies and a conference co-chair

“What was particularly rewarding was hearing directly from participants that they had received valuable feedback on their research, developed new professional connections and identified opportunities for future collaboration. That is ultimately what an international conference like DBMC should accomplish.”

Marzieh Riahinezhad of NRC, also a conference co-chair, says challenges such as climate resilience, durability and decarbonization cannot be solved in isolation.

“Bringing together researchers, industry professionals and policymakers from around the world allows us to share knowledge, learn from one another and accelerate progress.”

Among 82 respondents to a post-conference survey, the event received an average overall rating of 4.53 out of five. Networking opportunities received an average rating of 4.36. More than 30 respondents identified networking and international collaboration as among the conference’s most valuable aspects.

For Morgan Foster, a PhD student in mechanical engineering at Carleton University, those exchanges are already influencing future research.

“This conference proved to be an excellent opportunity to learn new research methods and hygrothermal assessment approaches from experts around the world,” Foster says. “I received excellent feedback and questions about my ongoing research, all of which will help me improve my future work.”

Laboratory tours gave visitors a closer look at Concordia’s research in building science, energy efficiency, building envelopes and climate resilience. They visited the Centre for Zero Energy Building Studies, the Solar Simulator and Environmental Chamber, the Atmospheric Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel and the Future Buildings Laboratory.

The conference also hosted international technical committees associated with the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction, CSA Group and the International Organization for Standardization. Their meetings advanced ongoing work on building durability and performance.

Industry participants also reported strong engagement. The Cool Roof Rating Council, which sponsored the event and contributed two papers and a workshop, connected with researchers already using its resources and others discovering its work on cool surfaces.

DBMC 2026 was co-chaired by Ge and Liangzhu Leon Wang of Concordia, Riahinezhad of NRC and Michael Lacasse, an adjunct professor at Concordia and retired NRC senior research officer. Ge also credited the organizing team, whose work over three years helped deliver the event.

For Sathya Ramachandran, a Concordia Building Engineering graduate and senior director of buildings for Western Canada at EXP, the gathering demonstrated the value of meeting in person.

“While the technical program was outstanding, one of the greatest highlights was reconnecting with old colleagues, meeting new friends, sharing ideas and enjoying the camaraderie that makes conferences like this so memorable,” he says.

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What Can Somalia Learn from Singapore’s Development

What Can Somalia Learn from Singapore’s Development

Sep 14, 2026

Aerial view of numerous ships near a vibrant coastal city and lush greenery.by Jeffry Surianto via Pexels

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What can Somalia learn from Singapore about building the leaders and institutions of tomorrow?

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UNDP September 13, 2026

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Group of people in formal attire stand before a white columned building with OEI Tiong Ham sign

Group of people in formal attire stand before a white columned building with OEI Tiong Ham sign

 

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This was the focus of an Executive Leadership Study Tour that brought senior leaders from the National Leadership Academy Somalia (NLA) and representatives from the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) to Singapore.

Hosted by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Executive Education, the study tour provided an opportunity for the Somali delegation to explore approaches to executive education, public sector leadership development and lifelong learning, and to consider how relevant lessons could be adapted to Somalia’s context.

The delegation explored five areas central to the continued development of the NLA:

NLA Development Areas infographic with five sections around a central group icon.

The learning continued through engagements with the Institute for Adult Learning Singapore, NUS Institute of Systems Science and NUS School of Continuing and Lifelong Education. These exchanges offered further perspectives on continuing education, technology, skills development and youth leadership.

For the delegation, the value of the experience lay in connecting what they observed with Somalia’s own development priorities.

“We really needed that trip. From the moment you step into the airport, you can see how far Singapore has come, especially in technology. It made me reflect on how Somalia can learn from such experiences and make better use of its own potential.” Mohamed Hared of the National Leadership Academy said, reflecting on the role of technology in development.

“One of the biggest lessons for me was seeing how professional experience is connected to teaching. Practitioners bring real-world knowledge into the classroom. It also reinforced that learning does not stop when you earn a degree; lifelong learning is essential for developing capable people and institutions.” National Leadership Academy Director General Ms. Hodhan Noor Abdi noted.

These reflections point to an important priority for Somalia: developing institutions that continuously invest in the knowledge, skills and leadership capabilities of the people who serve the public.

The study tour forms part of the Somalia Transformational Governance Programme (STGP), which supports Somalia’s efforts to strengthen governance and public sector institutions, including leadership development and institutional capacity, in coordination with the Office of the Prime Minister Somalia

The programme is implemented with the Office of the Prime Minister and supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). Through this partnership, Somali institutions are gaining opportunities to strengthen their capacity, exchange knowledge and draw on international experience as they advance nationally led governance reforms.

UNDP Somalia thanks Sida and the Office of the Prime Minister for their continued partnership and support, and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Executive Education, Institute for Adult Learning Singapore, NUS Institute of Systems Science and NUS School of Continuing and Lifelong Education for welcoming and hosting the delegation and sharing their expertise.

For the National Leadership Academy, the experience provides new perspectives to inform its continued development and its role in preparing a new generation of Somali leaders.

The lessons from Singapore now return to Somalia, where they can contribute to the ongoing work of strengthening leadership, institutions and public service for the country’s future.


 

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Sustainability: Who Will Still Champion This By 2031?

Sustainability: Who Will Still Champion This By 2031?

Sep 13, 2026

Crowd holding a protest sign with ‘Fight Today for a Better Tomorrow’, outdoors and during the day. by Markus Spiske via Pexels

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Sustainability, Who Will Still Be Doing This In 2031?

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 In BusinessToday – September 12, 2026

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Most of the students who registered for their first semester this year will graduate in 2030, the year the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) expire. They have spent their whole education being told the climate is their inheritance, and every survey of young people in this region says they believe it, often to the point of anxiety. What no one has told them is what comes after. UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development framework runs out on the same year, and while a successor agenda is under international discussion, nothing has been settled. Where sustainability effort has been built mainly as compliance with a global target, there is a real risk that when the scaffolding comes down, the building behind it turns out to be unfinished. We do not exempt ourselves from that risk.

What we have, at best, is a decade of small attempts and a reasonable amount of learning from the ones that did not last. It was sustained by people willing to do the unglamorous parts: sorting and weighing what the campus threw away until its recycling could be stated in numbers, standing in drains and streams to sample water, arguing for a forest to survive longer than their own tenure, making the case for sustainability from faith as comfortably as from science. Some of it held. Much of it faded quietly when the people behind it graduated or moved on, and those are the ones we think about most.

The pattern in the ones that held is not complicated. None began as a directive from above. Each began because a group of people found the work meaningful and asked to be let in. Volunteerism, not instruction, has been the calling factor.

That has taught us something we are still not good at. Inclusion in this work should not be rationed by seniority, qualification or apparent capability, and we have caught ourselves doing exactly that. A contract cleaner knows more about the campus waste stream than most of the people who write about it. A clerk who has worked in the same building for twenty years knows which rooms are cooled to no purpose. A first year student brings little except willingness, and willingness is definitely not a small thing. Sustainability may be one of the few institutional agendas where the least credentialled participant holds the most useful information, and where taking part is itself the training. Every time we have narrowed the invitation to those already expert, the circle has stopped widening.

Something else has happened alongside all this. Sustainability has become, to put it plainly, fashionable. Climate anxiety, green careers and environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting have pushed the subject into the mainstream, and more volunteers arrive at our door than before. This is a gift and we would rather receive it than question it. The harder task is converting enthusiasm into capability before the fashion moves on, and we are still working out how.

That conversion is where the Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development (RCE) has been useful to us. RCE Central Semenanjung has been recognised by the United Nations University since 2014, and since January 2022 it has been hosted by the UM Sustainable Development Centre. An RCE is not a research unit. It is a network meant to connect a university with the schools, community groups, faith institutions, local authorities, businesses and international partners around it, so that education for sustainable development happens outside the lecture hall as well as inside it. In practice it has meant green educators from Penang benchmarking against our campus and students from RCE Tongyeong Sejahtera Forest in South Korea coming to compare notes with ours. We have learned at least as much from these visitors as they have from us.

On that point we want to be direct. The network is open and we would genuinely welcome more partners from outside academia. Companies with a sustainability function and nowhere to place it, non-governmental organisations needing a research partner, local authorities with a problem and no foundations looking for delivery capacity. Universities have no special claim on this agenda, and the work goes further when it is not attempted alone. If you are reading this and you have been looking for a way in, we would like to hear from you.

The value of that network for a student is easy to overlook. In a classroom a student is a recipient. Inside an RCE activity, a student becomes an educator. A third year undergraduate explaining composting to a group of ten year olds, or answering a visiting Korean student on why a campus bothers to protect a patch of forest, is doing something harder and more durable than passing an examination. They are being asked to own the argument in public. Very few of them forget it.

So how does any of this survive past 2030? Our working answer, offered tentatively, is that the goals were always the scaffolding and never the building. What outlasts a framework is the number of people who have taken on the habit, and the institutions that keep giving them somewhere to put it. There are things would help, and we are not yet doing any of them well.

Recognise the learning. Volunteering that teaches real competence should be documented as such, through micro-credentials or a co-curricular record a graduate can show an employer. It costs little and gives the volunteer a reason to go deep rather than merely attend.

Change what is counted. Counting participants tells us about a semester, which is why we do it. Asking what a cohort is doing five years later would tell us whether we changed anyone. We should be asking the second question.

Anchor to horizons beyond 2030. Malaysia’s net zero commitment runs to 2050. Planetary health, water security and biodiversity have no expiry date at all. If people understand their work as belonging to those longer horizons rather than to a numbered goal, whatever follows becomes a matter of relabelling rather than rebuilding.

Then there is the part we cannot organise, only hope for. Students who found something here go on to banks, ministries, schools, engineering firms and start-ups, and some of them look back. When a graduate returns with an offer to collaborate, to fund, to mentor a current cohort, or simply to tell the next intake what the work led to, it is worth more to us than any ranking submission. We have not made it easy for them to find their way back, and that is our failing rather than theirs. To those graduates we would say plainly that the door is open and the invitation stands.

The people volunteering on our campus today will be in mid-career by 2040 and running institutions by 2050. Whatever the goals are called by then, they are the ones who will be expected to deliver them. The task is not to hold their attention until 2030. It is to make sure that when the deadline passes they barely notice, because the work had already stopped being a target and become a way of doing things. We are some distance from that, and we would rather say so and get on with it.

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How Western Consumption Affects Global South Environment

How Western Consumption Affects Global South Environment

Sep 12, 2026

Above is a high-angle view of a vast landfill site in South Tangerang, Indonesia, showing environmental impact. by Tom Fisk via Pexels, despite the fact that, per many studies, the majority of people everywhere support the environment.

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How Western consumption becomes the Global South’s environmental nightmare

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Rachida Bouhid, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

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Industrialized countries send millions of metric tonnes of used clothing, electronic equipment and other products to the Global South, and with them, the environmental and health costs tied to producing, consuming and disposing of those goods.

In Accra, Ghana, thousands of pieces of secondhand clothing arrive each week at the Kantamanto Market, one of the world’s largest textile resale hubs. Some of these garments will find a new buyer and get a second life. Others — unsellable or low-quality — will end up in dumps, waterways or informal landfills.

The environmental accountability that applied to these products back in Europe or North America doesn’t follow them to Ghana.

It’s a paradox rarely discussed: materials circulate globally, but environmental responsibility stops at the border.

When we drop off a used phone at a collection point, donate clothes to an organization or replace an obsolete computer, we often feel like we’ve done our part for the environment. But the story doesn’t end there. Many of these items begin a second life elsewhere, or simply reach the end of the road, sometimes thousands of kilometres away.

Complex and hard-to-trace chains

This issue came up earlier this year at a symposium entitled When the Global South Inspires the Global North, held during the 93rd Acfas (Association canadienne-française pour l’avancement des sciences) congress.

I was in attendance as part of my research on organizational governance models and the shift toward a regionalized circular economy.

In her opening remarks, Jocelyne Landry Tsonang of the African Circular Economy Network pointed out that products often travel without the responsibility mechanisms, eco-taxes or funding that should come with them. The environmental and social costs associated with the end of a product’s life are then shifted to regions that generally have fewer resources to manage them.

Electronic waste is a particularly telling case. According to the Global E-waste Monitor 2024, the world generated 62 million metric tonnes of electrical and electronic waste in 2022. Yet only 22.3 per cent of this waste was officially collected and recycled through documented channels. The rest often follows paths that are difficult to trace, feeding into complex global markets.

As Canadian geographer Josh Lepawsky demonstrated in his 2018 book Reassembling Rubbish, electronic waste doesn’t just flow in a straight line from north to south. It moves through globalized networks where reuse, repair, material recovery and dismantling all intersect.

But even when these flows generate economic value, the environmental and health risks tend to stay concentrated in the regions where the products end up.

The uneven distribution of pollution

In several African cities, waste pickers extract copper, aluminum and other metals from used electronic devices. Their work helps recover resources that would otherwise be lost. However, these activities are frequently carried out without adequate protective equipment, under precarious conditions and with little institutional recognition.

This is what Canadian scholar Max Liboiron calls an unequal distribution of pollution. In her 2021 book Pollution is Colonialism, she argues that environmental harm is never spread neutrally. Some populations benefit while others absorb a disproportionate share of the fallout.

The textile industry provides another striking example. Every year, large volumes of used clothing are exported to second-hand markets in Africa, Latin America and Asia. When a significant portion of these shipments consists of low-quality clothing that is unsellable or difficult to recycle, the receiving countries are left with a waste management problem they did not create.

The Kantamanto market captures this perfectly. It’s often held up as a circular-economy success story thanks to the sheer scale of reuse and repair happening there. But it’s also stuck with mountains of clothing nobody will buy. The environmental cost of that clothing doesn’t fall on the markets that shipped it out — it falls on Ghana.

Better integrating circular economy practices

A 2017 analysis by the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University defines the circular economy simply — it’s a model that cuts resource extraction and waste through reuse, repair, recycling and longer product lifespans.

But as early as 2015, researchers writing in Economy and Society warned that debates on circularity tend to fixate on material flows and technical fixes, sidelining the social, political and territorial questions underneath.

This critique is particularly relevant for Global North-Global South trade. The articles compiled in the December 2024 special issue of VertigO, dedicated to the circular economy in the Global South, show that circular practices — far from being limited to the institutional models promoted in industrialized countries — are based on local systems of repair, reuse and recovery that have long existed, often outside formal frameworks.

The people who sustain these systems contribute to value creation, waste reduction and resource circularity, yet they are rarely factored into the financing or governance of the circular economy.

The issue therefore goes beyond recycling. It is about how responsibilities get distributed globally. The Basel Convention regulates the transboundary movement of hazardous waste, but plenty of gaps remain when it comes to used goods, textiles or electronics meant for reuse.

How Western Consumption Affects Global South EnvironmentThe Adidas logo is visible on a piece of fabric in a landfill

The environmental costs associated with products are shifted to the destination regions rather than borne by the markets that put them into circulation. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

A better approach to responsibility

There are increasing calls for a broader definition of responsibility, one where the benefits of bringing a product to market, and the costs of its end of life, don’t simply stop at the border. A truly sustainable circular economy means circulating more than materials: it means circulating responsibility, funding and protections too.

None of this means shutting down the global trade in used goods. In many parts of the world, these flows support real economic activity, extend product life and create local jobs. The challenge is making sure financial and regulatory responsibility travels with the products themselves.

Canada isn’t immune to this problem. Our recycling, deposit-return and extended-producer responsibility systems are still built around national or provincial borders, even though the products we consume, and the waste they eventually become, are part of global supply chains.

Sorting our waste more carefully is a good first step. But a real shift toward circularity means asking where things go once they leave our homes, who’s responsible for them and what resources back that responsibility up. If our waste crosses borders, our accountability needs to as well.The Conversation

Rachida Bouhid, Ph.D Scholar, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Finding Beauty in Chaos: Human Resilience in Cities

Finding Beauty in Chaos: Human Resilience in Cities

Sep 11, 2026

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Above is a captivating view of Kuwait Towers on a foggy morning with swings and people. by Haroon Shabbir Hashmi via Pexels

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Finding Beauty in Chaos: Human Resilience in Cities The simulation part of the exhibition showcases the different human actors who shape a built environment, accompanied with items usually associated with them.

The simulation part of the exhibition showcases the different human actors who shape a built environment, accompanied with items usually associated with them.

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Finding beauty in chaos

Hamad Almuzaini’s Precarious Beings explores how people quietly reshape public spaces in Kuwait through everyday improvisation
By Nebal Snan

As he walked between Al-Watiya and the Panasonic Tower in Kuwait City in 2021, Hamad Almuzaini encountered a sidewalk completely blocked off by an active construction site. A massive ditch had severed the sidewalk, guarded by a tall construction fence. But pedestrians still managed to squeeze through a small opening. First, they stepped onto a flat trail forged by pedestrian footprints in the sand, then they balanced across a single wooden plank suspended beside the deep ditch.

“It’s extremely unsafe but it was the most efficient path,” he said. “People were walking on this path while being on their phone. It’s like second nature.” Having recently returned to Kuwait after years of living abroad, including in the United States, Almuzaini was experiencing a reverse culture shock. “There’s a lot of chaos. … At the beginning it was a bit frustrating,” he said.

But watching pedestrians casually carve their own path through a construction site changed his perspective. “You realize that urban design and city planning is always a negotiation,” Almuzaini explains. “The power is really in the people and how they shape their experience and I feel that in Kuwait a lot.”

Driven by curiosity rather than annoyance, he began using his phone to photograph these seemingly small details. Soon, Almuzaini found comfort in Kuwait’s chaos. He said he appreciated how it allowed people to contribute to the rules governing how a public space is utilized. “Chaos allows for autonomy. So we are all inventing together … Sometimes we are repurposing things,” he said. “It’s really beautiful.”

Finding Beauty in Chaos: Human Resilience in Cities

Finding Beauty in Chaos: Human Resilience in Cities

A barrier becomes a bench

Hamad Almuzaini

Although an architect by training, Almuzaini had grown disillusioned with the rigidity of corporate architecture. “In school it was all fun and very theoretical and conceptual, but later I was doing kitchens and bathrooms, and there was a large disconnect,” he said. He eventually stepped away from traditional architecture and turned toward art and product design, while continuing to draw on the 3D modeling and drafting skills he had developed as an architect.

 

Since then, Almuzaini has continued observing how people actually use and adapt public spaces. He documented many examples of this ingenuity over the years. In one instance, people repurposed a bent metal safety barrier into a makeshift bench. In another, he observed commuters creating an informal bus stop because the designated stop was too far away. People began leaning against nearby poles and leaving their bags there. Gradually, the spot turned into a visual signal for buses to stop and pick them up.

 

From photos to Precarious Beings

These observations ultimately culminated in Almuzaini’s debut solo exhibition, “Precarious Beings”. The exhibition examines the everyday objects and pieces of infrastructure that shape how people use and experience a place. “I chose (to refer to the objects as) beings because … I’m trying to show how animated they can be and how all these stories and narratives can be compressed into a single object.”

The objects are precarious because their meanings are also precarious, he added. “Everything is subject to change… nothing in the built environment should ever be taken for granted.”

Almuzaini’s process is rooted in de-acceleration, an attempt to slow down and better understand the world around him. For the exhibition, Almuzaini distilled his photos into graphite sketches and took notes of his thoughts on each object. In some cases, he translated the artworks into sculptures and ceramics. Through photography, drawing and sculpture, Almuzaini traces the subtle relationships between people, objects, systems and the built environment.

The exhibition gradually expands from individual “subjects” to broader “situations” and, finally, “simulations.” In the “subjects” section, Almuzaini presents hand-drawn graphite studies of individual pieces of infrastructure on a series of cards, arranged to reflect how he encounters them in everyday life.

One of the artworks features trash cans hanging off poles outside the Kaifan Co-op, near Almuzaini’s family home. When a trash can breaks off the pole, the parking attendant at the co-op continues placing it beside the pole instead of replacing it with a new one. Another installation features a street curb made of lightweight toilet paper and joint compound that can be lifted with a single finger. However, it is painted in “heavy” safety-yellow and black, prompting viewers to question whether visual color carries physical weight in urban infrastructure.

In the simulation series, wooden panels represent human actors who shape a built environment, such as security guards, shopkeepers and maintenance workers. Each actor is accompanied with everyday items usually associated with them. In the case for the security guard, it’s a Lipton tea bag, a Styrofoam cup, a cigarette and a Casio watch.

A love letter to Kuwait

Almuzaini views his body of work as a sentimental “love letter to Kuwait”. “It’s special in its own way, and I think I feel that even more when I’m away from it,” said Almuzaini, who lives between Kuwait and Dubai. Precarious Beings is on display at the Tashkeel Studio and Gallery in Dubai until October 11. Tashkeel’s year-long Critical Practice Program gave him the time, space and mentorship to develop his practice.

The experience also highlighted something he feels is missing in Kuwait: long-term programs that give emerging creatives the time and guidance to grow. Kuwait has plenty of “raw talent”, he said, but much of it remains unseen. He hopes more sustained mentorship programs can help bring that creative energy to wider audiences.

Almuzaini hopes his work encourages both architects and the public to slow down and appreciate the wisdom embedded in ordinary, everyday details. “Everyone in Kuwait is involved in shaping the city, and it’s on display,” Almuzaini said. “You just have to go and look.”

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