Dr. Will Galloway

Will Galloway is no stranger to sudden change. Throughout his career, external events have necessitated adaptation, most notably, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which killed more than 15,000 people and displaced countless others while Galloway was teaching at Keio University in Tokyo. "The entire faculty became focused on how to deal with reconstruction and, in my case, resilience,” recalls Galloway. "Adaptation is dealing with disaster after the fact, but if you want to be resilient, you need to be ready for what you don't know is coming down the line."

While we know what challenges our built environment is expected to face – rising temperatures and sea levels, increased wind speeds, more powerful storms and persistent drought, to name a few – Galloway contends that it isn’t enough to simply mitigate the effects of climate change. "You cannot just reduce carbon, because sea levels are already rising. We need to find ways to be more adaptive from the beginning." It's a tall order for architects, who today are tasked with more than just providing attractive housing. "If you only focus on that one aspect, you're not going to be able to solve the big problems – whether it's changing population, changing climate or changing economics. I'm interested in how to deal with those kind of global impacts through design."