Interdisciplinary Page 1

Climate change can affect all types of environments around the world, from the urban to the rural. Causing large scale events like global warming to more local threats such as flooding or droughts. And while a lot of people will do their part and help to or reduce their carbon footprint, while others probably do not care or won’t help if it doesn’t apply to them. So, what would happen if climate change could affect you on a more personal level? Using countless hours of research and analysis we put together a presentation on how climate change can impact your health and wellness.

For our poster, we wanted to show something that could benefit everyone. We chose to discuss ways of lessening the damage and deaths caused by Earthquakes. Earthquakes happen all over the world and there are ways that we can protect our homes and ourselves. Developing countries often face the worst aftermath of earthquakes. Usually, their buildings aren’t structured with proper reinforcements, which leads to them collapsing. It should be a global action to take measures against earthquakes, developing country or not. We’ll never know when earthquakes might strike, but we should prepare as much as possible before we’re unable to.

Floods are natural occurrences that submerge a piece of land or area underwater; This has been around throughout history, and it is no stranger for us today. From Hurricanes to storm surges, floods can happen through multiple means of natural disasters. Hurricane Katrina was one of those Natural Disasters when it had impacted New Orleans. It caused a massive amount of damage to 1,134 deaths from Louisiana. Although fertile land has some beneficial attributes with agricultural benefits, floods still cause a tremendous degree of damage to poll lines and even workers. Humanity has developed ways to control the waves from damaging their property. For example, the dams in the United States, preventing water from entering their cities or the waterways in Venice, Italy using gates to control the flow from submerging their towns. The future of flooding, with elaborate inventions like the “Big U” happening in New York or controlling the waterways like Venice, to even conserving our CO2 output from heating our glaciers; to manage our floods is within our grasps.

It is an increasingly common misconception that the growing variance in normal climate conditions is nothing more than a product of regular weather cycles. This notion is largely outside the scientific consensus and presents a dangerous impediment to progress. The basis of this presentation is studying the differences between Climate Change and weather fluctuations in order to express the level of impact humanity has had on its home. These climactic changes are broken down to their root causes and their expected effects on the planet. While climate change is largely a human issue, its effects on all the species that inhabit the earth cannot be underestimated.

Post-industrial, rapidly growing and ever competing cities are battling carbon emission urgencies while seeking an ever-extending skyline status. Star architects are being employed to save the day. Yet sustainability advocates are seeing iconic building creation as expensive and wasteful, calling– in the face of carbon budgets, for “reassessment of the standard of beauty.” What if they are wrong? In this paper I want to demonstrate how the most expensive, controversial and abstract designer of all is leading the way in sustainability, human equity and creating resilient cities. A few Santiago Calatrava projects from around the world are analyzed, in the plea for keeping structural art in our sustainable future.

My name is Amber Alicea and my research is about how the use of dyes in the clothing industry impacts the environment. The textile industry is responsible for the imbalance of our ecosystem and has diminished our air and water quality. The production of clothing has become one of the largest contaminators to our environment and uses numerous hazardous and toxic chemicals. The multi step process also requires a large amount of water and energy. The chemicals not only are released into our water but can also affect our skin and cause allergic reactions. We need to find more sustainable and effective ways to manufacture clothing to save our planet.